Road

The Subway Club, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: Harland Hamstrings

Shirley Dent

What is it with Thespania in the early 21st century and mid-80s Thatcherite Britain? The decade of the Iron Lady and the miners' strike, of 'them and us', seems to hold an allure for those who want to do 'real' theatre about 'real' people. The entertaining Cole Not Dole at last year's Fringe, the recent Lyric Theatre revival of Jim Cartwright's Road and the fact that there are two Roads at this year's Fringe are all examples of this reaching after the real.

There's nothing wrong with this from a dramatic point of view and you can see why a company that is a 'mix of newcomers and seasoned performers' would hit on Cartwright's Road. It is an ensemble piece if ever there was one and there's lots of gritty and witty character dialogue for actors to get their teeth into. And credit where credit's due. Harland Hamstrings go for it. You really believe they want to drive the bleakness of these lives home. Dan Rees convincingly belts out frustration in his last monologue. Stephanie Thorpe is a versatile performer and I was deeply frustrated that I was straining to hear her last critical monologue as Louise (turn the music down and speak up, dear).

But, but, but… There was something in the pace of the performance, a hesitance when eyeballing the audience that was telling. If you are going to do this - and Cartwright's Road is very much about eyeballing the audience and saying 'us' - then you have to go the whole hog. You have to believe so much in the anger and integrity of these characters, that you don't give a flying f$%@ if you make a member of the audience uncomfortable. But I don't think this is because these young actors are scared of an audience or can't act. I think it is because the 80s is fast becoming an era that we are nostalgic about in a peculiar way: we long for real people doing real politics. We want figures where we can really see the literal and metaphorical bruises of a rotten system.

This looking back in anger is a problem both politically and dramatically. Dramatically there was a sense in which these actors were acting with a spent force: there is nothing particularly shocking about the vomit-stained despair of the road anymore. Many people lived through the 80s and survived. I also believe that part of the off-pace, part of the hesitation, came from a sense that although the cast recognized the individual characters but couldn't hold them together in a coherent whole. They, and we as well, simply don't know what the masses are anymore.

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