FAST LABOUR. To 21 June.
London.
FAST LABOUR
by Steve Waters.
Hampstead Theatre To 21 June 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm, 11 & 18 June 2.30pm.
Captioned/Post-show Discussion 17 June.
Runs 2hr 35min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 June.
A theme without new insights and a question of morality.
How, exactly, does Victor make his money? He came from Russia for a minimum wage job then started up his own enterprise with a fellow Russian and a Ukrainian. Plus Anita, the Scottish Human Resources officer of the East Anglian fish-filleting company where he began working.
She invites him home, then travels over a hundred miles to see him, having resigned her job by email, with no notice and joins whatever enterprise he’s setting up. This sounds more plot convenience than likely behaviour.
Excusable maybe if the plot held any revelations. But Steve Waters tells us no more than we could read in any serious newspaper, in contrast to, say, David Edgar, whose plays always show an expert knowledge.
At first glance the play might seem to be saying something significant, because it includes a fair number of points familiar from news stories. There’s the illegal labourers trapped in unsafe premises, the forging of documents, and, in the background, the Russian Mafia. But all these prop up an action which never delves behind the headlines, just as the script’s ideas and humour are never quite sharp enough to make a keen point.
More interesting than the machinations of Victor’s British work-on-the–cheap organisation, Fast Labour, is his moral self-belief. Out to make money he keeps a belief he’s doing good – all those menial jobs that wouldn’t get done (a point made right at the start by the British labour-importer whom Victor goes on to rival). All the people from Eastern Europe who want to work here.
It isn’t only in business he sets his own levels. Just as he never comes clear to Anita, now co-manager plus lover, about the precise source of the workers, neither does he tell her he’s married, until Russian wife Tanya turns up.
Performances in Ian Brown’s production, down from the co-producers, Leeds’ West Yorkshire Playhouse, are good enough. And the longer first act offers some interestingly contrasted East Anglian land and seascapes, by Simon Daw and Mic Pool, making clear that what you see from your window depends on how much money you have.
Alexei: Roger Evans.
Grimmer: Mark Jax.
Victor: Craig Kelly.
Anita: Kirsty Stuart.
Andrius: Joseph Kloska.
Tanya: Charlotte Lucas.
Director: Ian Brown.
Designer/Video: Simon Daw.
Lighting: Mark Doubleday.
Sound/Video: Mic Pool.
Dialect coach: Neil Swain.
Fight director: Kate Waters.
Assistant director: Justin Audibert.
2008-06-04 12:32:39