Martin Scorsese started it, with
Gangs Of New York; Steven Knight
brought it across the Atlantic for BBC-TV, with
Peaky Blinders; now the recurrent
fascination with historical street gangs has made it to the British
stage. “Scuttle” was gang slang for a rumble in Victorian Manchester,
and Rona Munro’s play focuses on the Bengal Tigers gang, based in
Bengal Street in the city’s Ancoats district
circa 1880, and their feud with the
neighbouring Prussia Street mob.
Munro’s stock is high following her trilogy about the Scottish throne
The James Plays for the National
Theatre of Scotland, also seen at its London counterpart. Here, too,
she fits in as many different vectors of relationship as a
Shakespearean history play. Theresa, a maverick from Bengal Street, is
the sister of Joe, who went off to join the Army and has now returned
to Prussia Street; before he left, he impregnated Susan, a nurse whose
attempts to keep her own brother George out of Prussian entanglements
prove ill-fated. Meanwhile Sean, the “king” of Bengal Street, is facing
a challenge from his resentful lieutenant Jimmy, and having trouble
protecting “tiger cub” gang mascot Polly.
It is all about power: power over particular individuals as in the
Sean/Jimmy/Polly triangle, the allure of power in general which draws
youngsters such as new arrival Thomas into the maelstrom, even the
non-violent power of intelligence which Theresa wields just as surely.
Rona Morison’s Theresa is loyal to her neighbourhood but not to
thuggery; her bluntness overlays an awareness that her own battle is a
losing one.
Wils Wilson has considerable experience directing large-scale and
site-specific work, and here she enlists a community ensemble of over
30 to flesh out the ranks of gang members and assorted other
Mancunians. She also maintains a sense of mechanistic, industrial power
throbbing through the city as persistently as the blood in the
scuttlers’ veins: the stage is dominated by an impressionistic piece of
cotton-mill plant, and Denis Jones’ almost uninterrupted score combines
treated guitar with polyrhythmic heavy-industrial beats. Yet despite
such assiduous attentions, we do not feel the seduction or the
inevitability of the gang lifestyle, and its unavoidable heavy cost is
little more than a truism.
Written for the Financial
Times.