England People Very Nice

Synopsis

A riotous journey through four waves of immigration from the 17th century to today. As the French Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews and the Bangladeshis in turn enter the chaotic world of Bethnal Green, each new influx provokes a surge of violent protest over housing, jobs, religion and culture. And the emerging pattern shows that white flight and anxiety over integration is anything but new. Fucking Frogs! My grandfather didn’t die in the English Civil War so’s half the population of France could come over here and live off the soup! Written with scurrilous bravura, Richard Bean’s great sweep of a comedy follows a pair of star-crossed lovers amid cutters’ mobs, Papists, Jewish anarchists and radical Islamists across four tempestuous centuries. Irish and Jewish, that’s the worst mix. You end up with a family of pissed up burglars run by a clever accountant.

Our Review:

12 February 2009

There’s a simple-minded glee about racial stereotypes in Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice in the Olivier – the first of the new season (the seventh) of Travelex £10 tickets productions -- that threatens to engulf the audience in despair and disbelief, but Nicholas Hytner’s inventive and fast-moving production just about keeps the evening afloat.

And you can rationalise the cartoon caricature side of things in the fact that the cast is a crowd of detainees in an immigration centre putting on their own play about the waves of incoming nationalities over the years, starting with a comic book representation of Romans bopping cavemen over the head with clubs to the trite accompaniment of a live folk group.

This sequence sets the visual tone of Mark Thompson’s design as a mix of extraordinary lighting tricks, paint book graphics, projections and animations (supervised by Pete Bishop and lighting designer [N...

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Latest User Review

Excelsior - 23 July 2009:

I was born in Bethnal Green and lived there during its 'Jewish' period. It was good to hear English spoken as it once was there - none of this prissy hiding of one's feelings. The audience was a total pain when I saw the play - most hated it - all too middle class for my taste. The theatre building is, as ever, dreadful - what a 'fucking' mess the National Theatre building is - what makes it worse is what it could have been had they used better materials....

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