GLADIATOR GAMES. To 25 February.
London
GLADIATOR GAMES
by Tanika Gupta
Theatre Royal Stratford East To 25 February 2006
Tue-Sat 7.30pm except 7, 21, 22 Feb 6.30pm Mat 25 Feb 3pm
Audio-described 16 Feb
BSL Signed 21 Feb 6.30pm
TICKETS: 0800 183 1188/ 020 8534 0310
www.stratfordeast.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 10 February
Compulsive as a social document and a character portrayal, though the two pull in different directions.
It’s a good title and a bad one. Gladiator, a ‘game’ allegedly played by some prison officers at Feltham Young Offenders Institution, involved putting 2 prisoners likely to be mutually hostile in the same cell, locked up for 22 hours a day, to see if violence would erupt.
But the murder of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham in 2000 wasn’t gladiatorial; it was more like a Christian (so to speak) thrown to a lion. A minor criminal from a decent family, showing every sign of going straight, Mubarek was battered to death by the psychopathic racist youth sharing his cell on the night before his release. The alleged Gladiator Games are never proved in Tanika Gupta’s mix of verbatim accounts from the murder inquiry and people involved in it, with invented scenes.
Yet Zahid’s requests for a different cell-mate were ignored. He’d told his parents Robert Stewart was “weird”; they’d tried cheering him up, saying he’d soon be out. (Mubarek would have been released days before his death but for an administrative problem.)
Gupta’s compulsive play presents a grim social picture: would, someone asks, a mild-mannered white lad ever have been paired with a violent non-white racist? It illuminates institutional and political failures (Home Secretary David Blunkett refused to meet the bereaved family or, until forced, hold a public inquiry).
But imagined scenes mean actors creating characters. And delinquency provides energy on stage. While the cast admirably represent the people giving their versions of events from the gallery and edges of Paul Wills‘ grey-and-white set, it’s when beds are set-up centre stage for the inmates’ cell that the dramatic takes over from the reportage.
And Ray Panthaki’s portrait of Zahid’s peaceful desire to see out his time (rightly) has none of the blinding fascination of Kevin Trainor’s Stewart. A violent, unpredicatable, brow-tattooed ball of Mancunian fury, he’s lost when transferred to Feltham. His records were lost too, and publicly he seemed a model prisoner. But the private chaos in his eyes, spurting out in anger makes this a deeper character study than the rest of the play was written to contain.
Imtiaz Amin/Zahid Mubarek: Ray Panthaki
Robert Stewart/Duncan Keys: Kevin Trainor
Maurice Travis/Jamie Barnes: Paul Keating
Mubarek Amin/Suresh Grover: Shiv Grewal
Sajida Mubarekk/Satwant Randhawa: Claire Lichie
Director: Charlotte Westenra
Designer: Paul Wills
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp
Sound: Nick Greenhill
Composer: Niraj Chag
Dialect Coach: Jeannette Nelson
Fight director: Bret Yount
Assistant director: Zahra Ahmadi
2006-02-12 00:32:40