PLAGUE OF INNOCENCE.

Leicester

PLAGUE OF INNOCENCE
by Noel Greig

Haymarket Theatre To 2 November 2002
Runs 1hr 20min No interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 2 November

A forceful piece in a fine production.This piece reminds how strong Theatre in Education could be in its 1970s-80s heyday. Starting as a small-scale 1988 Sheffield schools-tour show, Greig's poetic script creates a mosaic of repression and rebellion that rebounds with considerable force in 2002. Its latest form mirrors the changing relation of theatre and young people: no longer are actors performing in schools; now a sizeable youth cast work alongside five professionals in a large-scale, mainstage production.

Greig uses the local (to Sheffield) story of Eyam village, which sealed itself off during the 1660s to prevent bubonic plague spreading. Here, the plague is AIDS and the sealing government instigated and enforced. Near the start a giant container arrives in the bleak countryside with a new load of inmates. Innocence and self-sacrifice are no longer options.

It recalls Howard Brenton's 1974 dystopia The Churchill Play , which saw a British government using Northern Ireland-style internment against mainland dissidents. Here, fear of AIDs promotes homophobia then spreads to include all who disagree with the new presidential-type leader, the Primo.

'Guess who?' you'd say, as the clean-suited leader stands firm before us, had the work been written last year. But its condemnation of 'Promoters' of homosexuality is startling – Greig drafted the script just before the Thatcher government began its clause 28 crusade against 'promoting' homosexuality in schools. There's a fine schoolroom scene where conscience and fear struggle in David Fielder's teacher as he gives the truth, not Party lies, about being gay. It's finely-played, intensified by the class's RJC Dance-inspired group choreography.

Gerry is fearful because there are cameras concealed in the classroom - 1984 is another dystopian reference (character names are hauled in from Orwell), and Greig explores the corruption of language, how the term 'Potential' becomes a public smear-term for anyone the government wants to demonise as disruptive.

It's time and education origins come through in what seems now an over-emphatic sequence of references to HIV and occasional 'slipped-in' point-making lines, like one about the difference between a disease (AIDS) and a natural way of being (gay): central to the piece, but overtly spelled-out. But that's well worth bearing to see the play expand in Kully Thiaria's confident, well-acted production.

Sarah: Lynette Clarke
Julie: Christine Devaney
Gerald: David Fielder
Spider: Cathy Ryan
Winston: Marc Small
And: Lisa Clark, Jamie Dennis, Steve Karbik, Rebecca Kibble, Adrian Kirkland, Jo Maclean, Mark Peachey, Michael Quinn, Taresh Solanki, Karen Stevens, Tom Wiffen, Katy Wong, Angela Wright

Director: Kully Thiarai
Designer: Emma Donovan
Lighting: James Farncombe
Sound: Fergus O' Hare for Aura Sound Design Ltd.
Composer: Tom Bailey
Movement: Donald Edwards, in association with RJC Dance Productions

2002-11-04 14:51:23