We take it stoically when the classic
English weather puts a literal dampener on outdoor summer events. In
theatre terms, though, classics are less at risk than new work. At
Shakespeare’s Globe, I have seen a
Tempest
that benefited from special effects courtesy of God; but Ché
Walker’s new play at the same venue, set on the bustling cosmopolitan
streets around Camden Town Tube station, might have been washed out by
the rain on its opening night. In the event, a couple of forthright
additional lines to the rapped no-photography-no-phones prologue kept
the rain-caped groundlings onside, and once we heard the opening
scene’s gospel number, “Jesus Gave Me Water”, a bond of genial
self-awareness was forged between performers and audience.
The Frontline fits in the
Globe because, although unambiguously of the present day, it is a city
play in a solid Elizabethan/Jacobean tradition: a large, almost
sprawling work where several plotlines jostle for prominence with none
winning out. What matters here is the big picture, the diversity of
activities – love, sex, drugs, fast food, race issues – and yet the
similarity of drives as all characters search for meaning, fulfilment,
identity, whether it comes through a quick buck made as a drug courier
or a lap-dancer or through a cracked, obsessive search which leads one
elderly man to accost every woman on stage as his long-lost daughter.
John Stahl is excellently cast as the narrator, a philosophical hot dog
vendor who early on heralds and then guides us towards the death which
will climax the evening, that of easygoing dope peddler Miruts (Beru
Tessema). Walker portrays London’s melting-pot of cultures well: young
men of Ethiopian and Somali descent argue about Mogadishu in standard
north London accents, a Scot and an Afghan spontaneously band together
to defend their neighbours against an Anglo-Saxon racist thug. Matthew
Dunster’s production keeps matters constantly on the move, responding
well to Walker’s overlapping dialogue so that it seems like a properly,
incompletely observed city night. Even the Camden location feels
authentic: many of us know, for instance, the real-life equivalent of
“the Ephemera Theatre” where Trystan Gravelle’s precious actor is
trying to entice the press to his one-man show about Walter Sickert.
After the uncertainties of last year’s new work at the Globe,
The Frontline feels very much part
of the season and of the city.
Written for the Financial
Times.