Theatre Local is the name of an excellent initiative by the Royal Court, which aims to take plays out of its respectable Sloane Square base and stage them in more edgy parts of town. This year, the location is the Bussey Building in Peckham, a former cricket bat factory which is now a cultural centre. It is the site of the premiere of young writer Rachel De-lahay’s debut, The Westbridge, developed while she was participating in the Royal Court’s Unheard Voices Writers Programme, being part of a group comprising young Muslim writers. An important initiative, but is the play any good?
Set in Battersea, it paints a picture of urban life that is sexually, emotionally and racially complex. The lynchpin of the story is one family: Saghir is a Pakistani man who runs a local convenience store. Now divorced, his wife is white and so his kids, Ibi and Soriya, are mixed race. But while Ibi has had an arranged marriage with a young woman from Pakistan, Soriya makes a different choice.
In her 20s, she flatshares with George, a white British woman, and at the start of the play we see her lover, Marcus – mixed race white-Afro-Caribbean – moving in with them. Marcus is also part mentor, part hero to 16-year-old Andre, a black Briton who lives with his mum, Jamaican Audrey, a neighbour of Saghir’s. Nearby lies the notorious Westbridge estate.
The relationships of the characters are brought to crisis point when a rumour spreads that a young Pakistani girl has been gang-raped by black teenagers. Messages on Facebook and Twitter help to circulate the news and a riot soon erupts, recalling both similar disturbances in Birmingham in 2005 – although the racial mixture was different – and this summer’s violence.
In the play, Andre is accused of participating in the rape. At the same time, Soriya brings Marcus home to meet her father and brother, who was once the boyfriend of George, and questions about how members of various ethnic groups relate to each other are raised and talked about. Issues of personal and national identity are strongly debated.
As you’d expect, De-lahay writes the banter of the 20-somethings and the exasperation of their parents with an acute ear and impressive emotional sensitivity. The play is funny, fast-moving, timely, and its focus on mixed-race identity feels relevant, even if it’s not really urgent.
The main problem with this piece is that, although it vividly recreates contemporary reality, it is unadventurous in its style and form. The storytelling is linear and a bit soapy, owing more to Hollyoaks than to Tinchy Stryder. There is an enjoyable playfulness in the dialogue, but no playing with theatricality. It’s real, but no more so than the view from my Brixton window.
In its Peckham location, with makeshift platforms ranged around a distressed room full of chairs facing different directions, visiting The Westbridge feels exciting and Clint Dyer’s energetic production is powerful, although sometimes lacking in focus. Its mainly young cast – led by Chetna Pandya (Soriya), Fraser Ayres (Marcus) and Daisy Lewis (George) – revel in the play’s humour, but this remains an apprentice piece.
Love, and falling in love, discourages thought. When you’re experiencing such powerful emotions, rational ideas not only fly out of the window, they also take a trip around the block, buying a newspaper and a pint of milk along the way. In this case, as Rob Young’s Ex, a play with songs, suggests, all you can do is sing your heart out.
Ruby and her ex-boyfriend Jack meet in a bar three years after they split up. Their feelings are still raw and, despite having new partners, they find they are still attracted to each other, despite all the usual recriminations. But when Ruby reveals that she is about to emigrate to the United States with Keith, her American new man, it looks like decision time.
Bad boy Jack, who is now dating the gorgeous Claire, can either persuade Ruby to stay and to start again, or let her go. Ruby can either decide to follow her heart and stay with Jack, who is basically a loser, or fly into a thousand sunsets with Keith, who is handsome, successful and perfect. To complicate matters further, when Keith and Claire meet, they are attracted to each other.
With its nod to Noel Coward’s Private Lives, Ex could be a lively, dirty, smart and touching portrait of modern love. But it isn’t. The main problem is twofold: the show is as bad about making up its mind as its main characters, and its songs are unmemorable and uninspiring, with some really cringe-making lyrics.
The first half, which is mainly about Jack, a slob and unfaithful lover, and Ruby, a northern lass burdened with low self-esteem, stumbles along like a mildly drunken sketch show. Its main point is that relationships are never really over, and that meeting your ex can be and emotionally disturbing. This truism is dressed up with a handful of awful songs.
Things heat up a bit in the second half, with the appearance of Claire and Keith, whose glamour ups the stakes in Jack and Ruby’s relationship. Now the main point is the question of why nice women are attracted to bad boys. As one of the songs puts it: “Women don’t want perfect, they want a project”. Both Ruby and Claire are challenged on their ability, or not, to be able to change Jack. As if he was worth it.
If this kind of sexual politics is a bit old-fashioned, there are some good moments when Claire asserts a woman’s right to tell the truth about men, while Jack responds with his much cruder view of life. Likewise, there are some insights in the way that the cross-cultural attitudes of the Brits and the Americans are represented: the sunny optimism of America clashing with good old British miserabilism. I did manage a few laughs amid the dire dialogues and even more dire songs.
Yet despite its insights, the show can never really make up its mind and seems as indecisive as its main characters. The result is neither charming, nor perceptive. In fact, it’s annoying and soul-sapping. Even the bitter-sweet ending, with its stoical assertion of “no regrets” and its belated discovery of self-worth, can’t eradicate the suspicion that the show has no vision of change and no real idea of contemporary sexual politics.
Neither Young’s writing, nor Ross Lorraine’s music, nor Tricia Thorns’s direction can offer more than palliative care for broken hearts, despite some good work from the cast: Amy Booth-Steel (Ruby) and Gerard Carey (Jack) contrasting nicely with Siobhan Dillon (Claire) and Simon Thomas (Keith). So unless you really want to follow your heart, right off the edge of a cliff, you would do well to stay away.
