United We Stand review – a striking piece of work, whatever your politics
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Version 0 of 1. You know how it is with venues: most make you happy to be there; a rare few make you feel there is nowhere else you would rather spend the evening. So it is at the small but perfectly set-up Lantern. Its bare-brick simplicity and open friendliness are particularly well suited to Neil Gore’s new play for Townsend Productions, a company making a name for delivering vivid, politically committed theatre. A few scaffolding bars supporting wooden sheets make a backdrop. Boxes are scattered about the tiny stage; on top of one, a projector flickers: Ted Heath’s speech “to govern is to serve... not to divide but to unite”; views of building sites, marchers, army charges; a new year’s celebration. It is 1972, year of the building workers’ first, national, all-out strike. Two actors conjure this complex history. They swiftly shift scenes and styles, delivering information via songs (John Kirkpatrick’s musical direction), poems, dialogues, puppets and verbatim re-enactments (Louise Townsend directs). This is rough theatre, but there is nothing shoddy about its construction – form and subject are solidly mortared. After 12 weeks, the builders won an unprecedented rise that still left them at the bottom of the pay heap. They failed, however, to end “lump” practices (higher cash payments but waived rights). Subsequently, 24 of the strikers’ “flying pickets” were arrested and prosecuted at Shrewsbury crown court. Six were jailed for conspiracy, including Des Warren (William Fox) and Ricky Tomlinson (Neil Gore). The case presented through the performance is that the conspiracy was actually that of contractors (and their shareholders), government and the judiciary. It is dramatically convincing and factually supported by an accompanying exhibition (with information about a campaign to overturn all 24 prosecutions; shrewsbury24campaign.org.uk). Whatever your politics, this is a production worth seeing.United We Stand is at the Lantern theatre, Liverpool until 11 October, then touring |