THEATRE: Guy Willoughby
JUST what are Barney Simon and his cast doing in this bad production of a good but dated play about hopelessness in London’s East End? Sad to tell, but Simon — one of South Africa’s most celebrated directors — seems to have lost his way; at the very least, this version of Steven Berkoff’s East, at the Market Theatre, represents a horribly avoidable cul-de-sac.
The problem is partly one of — dreadful word — relevance; I really don’t know what this curious Cockney wet-dream has to tell us about anywhere, and least of all South Africa. It arises out of a very particular juncture of working- class alienation in Britain, the same alienation that spilled over into the punk movement shortly afterwards. That juncture has no parallels here — the situation in the East End of London itself is notably different today, too.
This lack of location, in place or in time, is the root of the problem in East. Few of the performers evince a clear idea of what they’re doing, language is mangled, staging is horridly literal, the whole thing largely an embarrassment.
I say the staging is literal, and by that I mean it does violence to Berkoff’s brand of theatre. Instead of allowing the writer’s extraordinary gutter-poetry to work, to suggest images powerful but private, Simon has chosen to have the actors graphically and repulsively sweat, paw and batter each other about the stage, to force on us a particular view of the playwright’s vision.
Berkoff is all about language, not action, in the end: suggestion and desire are everything. Not here.
The most unpleasant aspect of this literal-mindedness involves Gilda Blacher, the actress called upon to play the tarty biker’s moll, Sylv. Poor Gilda; because her character talks so much about genitalia, she is obliged to show hers off onstage. This is a gross error of judgment.
The unfortunate crotch-gyrations Blacher lays on a startled audience are unremitting — and probably the most tasteless thing I’ve seen on stage in a long while. I am amazed that actress and director could have countenanced this. Why should an actress be exposed in this way — literally?
Only Joss Levine and Robert Coleman, who play Mum and Dad, have a clear sense of the stylised caricature that Berkoff’s text requires. Jos Levine’s Dad is a kind of Alf Garnett — the kind of xenophobic dole-drawer who is ripe for enlistment by back-to-British neo-fascist movements. His monologues are an hilarious melange of sickly sentiment and racist claptrap, rendered with just the right touch of exaggeration by this fine mime artist.
Robert Coleman’s Mum, whose fag clings to her lower lip with more tenacity than even Keef Richard’s, is a jolly comic creation. She dreams of being swept out of her sordid life into the romance of a Greer Garson movie, and Coleman plays her somewhere between panto dame and bad drag — which is just right. Mum is a distraction from tackier moments.
Jamie Bartlett and Michael Gritten play the oafish, jaw- busting thugs, Mike and Les. Bartlett has a bullish energy that gets him through; Gritten’s monologues are flat, insinuating and dull. Here, Simon has let down Berkoff’s attention to nuances of speech most glaringly.
East is a real disappointment, a shoddily put-together travesty of Berkoff’s intentions. It doesn’t help the Market’s attempts to reposition itself at a critical juncture in its history. This is one production, I’m afraid, that should go West … quickly.