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Synopsis In the late 21st Century, one man still clings to Traditional British Values, managing his wayward wife and running a butchers shop: his Empire. When Perchik, committed vegetarian and outlaw artist, swims across Hadrian’s Channel to England and stows away in a container full of meat, he lands up in Saul’s shop. Since Saul’s last boy went missing, Perchik gets an instant job offer. With riots raging in the streets outside, it may be safest to accept. Or maybe not. Fast and farcically funny, Lucy Kirkwood’s first full-length play plunges you into a disturbing vision of a dystopian future.
Lucy Kirkwood is a first-time playwright with an almost farcically pessimistic view of the world if Tinderbox is anything to go by: her dystopian scene is an abandoned butcher’s shop in Bradford around World Cup year 2018, and the city is on fire with rioting. One can only presume that our national team has come a cropper yet again.
A Scottish vegetarian artist, Perchik, arrives in a meat sack and is taken on as an assistant by the rabidly nationalist butcher Saul, whose much younger wife, Vanessa, is familiar to Perchik through some pornographic films made on behalf of the Conservative Party. In the course of the play, which hinges on a budding love story, Vanessa re-enacts her lingerie-clad Lady Hamilton in the cheeky tribute movie “Fellatio Nelson.”
Saul and Vanessa are refugees from Barking, which was flooded when the River Roden burst its banks. Their children were killed in the 2012 (Olympics Year) attacks on Stratford East. Former employees in the shop have fed the cement mixer and ended up in the fridge. Vanessa dreams of an idyllic cottage. Cornwall has been sold off to the Chinese.
Sordid and larky at the same time, Kirkwood’s play is like a madcap mixture of Joe Orton’s high-spirited blasphemy, Ben Jonson’s triangular power play in The Alchemist, Martin McDonagh’s thud and blunder (an upside-down torture scene is a direct quote), and the poisoned lyricism of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. There are gunshots, foul language, smacked bottoms, bloody limbs and sardonic bursts of Edward Elgar and the National Anthem.
And there are brilliant performances from Sheridan Smith as a gurgling, winking, flirtatious Vanessa – this actress must surely soon play some of her namesake Maggie’s great roles, Millamant and Margery Pinchwife for starters – Jamie Forman as the lubriciously revolting Saul and Bryan Dick as the fly Perchik with a penchant for pulses. Nigel Betts and Sartaj Garewal are hilarious, too, as quick-change coppers and delivery boys.
Josie Rourke’s ebullient production may not convince you of the author’s vision as opposed to her calculated cleverness, but it’s certainly something far removed from the Bush’s studio sitcom tendencies. Underlining this point, Rourke and her designer, Lucy Osborne, have given the butcher’s a grimy, up-scaled dimension and reconfigured the new seating to create a mini-mock West End auditorium, with an end stage, plush red curtains and a joke chandelier. In all, a lovely, bawdy, deliciously off-colour evening.
John Cooper Clarke's "Beasley Street" put on a small stage.
Brilliant, sad, tragic, and funny.
I really enjoyed it.
Martin
- Martin
21 May 08
This play is FANTASTIC!! I really enjoyed it. Brilliant cast very, very funny. Sheridan was outstanding and so was the rest of the cast. It was great from start to finish and the ending was great I dont know how anyone could leave at the interval.If I could get to see it again I would. I agree with Mark it belongs in the west end. Well done to the cast. - Kate
12 May 08
Well I almost agree with everything Gareth says except I thought the acting too was atrocious. I left at the interval - life is too short to waste it on this shite. It was interminable and there was no way I would suffer anymore. It's badly written, poorly directed and played abysmally. I kept having to say to myself, I am in The Bush Theatre aren't I? It's as if Monty Python did a take on Sweeney Todd on Acid. It is a miserable attempt at puerile comedy. Utterly, utterly, dire. It should have been pulled at page one of the reading. Don't waste your life or even your hard earned money on this trash. - rds
09 May 08
Well, I'm clearly out-of-synch on this one. In c.25 years of visiting The Bush I don’t think I’ve ever walked out before. The failure of the air-conditioning in a new claustrophobic configuration of the space didn’t help, but had the play been any good I’d have suffered for my art in what is one of my very favourite theatres. Sadly this is a very laboured black comedy trying (but failing) to make some points about what’s happening to the country / planet. Even excellent performances by Sheriden Smith, Jamie Foreman and Bryan Dick can’t rescue this deeply disappointing play. I sincerely hope this configuration of the space isn’t permanent as the sightlines are poor, much of the intimacy is lost and it really is claustrophobic. - Gareth James
04 May 08
A Brilliant play with an air of Sweeney Todd, the cast play the roles so brilliantly (Sheridan Smith wows the audience with her charm and brilliance from curtain up till curtain down), this play deserves a bigger theatre and a mainstream west end move! - Mark Johnson
29 Apr 08
Set in a butchers in Bradford of the future we delve into the very strange existance of Saul,Perchik and Vanessa.
I Loved it!,all the cast are so brillaint especially the amazing Sheridan Smith who is just a class act!
- Tim
A small theatre with a mighty reputation! A premiere new writing theatre, The Bush has discovered and produced some of the most important playwrights, directors and actors over the last 30 years. Bush alumni include Conor MacPherson, Anthony Neilson, Bob Hoskins, Alan Rickman, Catherine Johnson, Julie Walters, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Bean and many many more. Only new plays are produced at this intimate (100 seat) venue on Shepherd's Bush Green and The Bush reads every script it is sent - currently 1500 a year, commissions up to 7 new plays a year and works with young writers to develop their skills. If you want to see the best, first - see it at The Bush. Due to move and operate from the old Shepherd's Bush Library in 2011 with an inaugural season in the autumn.
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