Review: Home Truths (Bunker Theatre)

When theatre company Cardboard Citizens first started 25 years ago, the mantra that theatre could actually help people was a fairly new concept in Britain. Artistic director Adrian Jackson wholeheartedly embraced the idea as well as the man who had managed to prove it with his work in Brazil, Augusto Boal.

Now, Boal and his Theatre of the Opressed is well know in artistic circles over here and the concept that theatre can make an impact on lives is acknowledged as, if not a guarantee, then at least a possibility. And in that time Cardboard Citizens has doggedly been working by the doctrine, helping homeless people in Britain, for a quarter of a century.

Home Truths is a cycle of new plays staged to celebrated this milestone and to look back at the recent(ish) history of housing in this country. It takes the form of a series of plays, three a night on three separate nights. Though I only watched the first cycle, there are nine in total and if you're interested in homelessness and housing issues then, judging by cycle one, I'd say it's worth trying to see them all.

Cycle one involves two shows ahead of the interval, written by Sonali Bhattacharyya (Slummers) and Heathcote Williams with Sarah Woods (The Ruff Tuff Cream Puff Estate Agency) and one after, written by Stef Smith (Back to Back to Back). The first takes us back to the Victorian era, where a follower of Octavia Hill – a pioneer of affordable housing – is trying to get a 'hardworking family' out of a London slum and into her house for poor people. It's clean and there are fewer disturbances, but there are strict rules the families who live there must adhere to. In bed by nine, and no involvement with political agitators being two quite key ones. The latter is a sticking point for the mother, who believes in the need for social change and that people on lower wages should be able to live their lives as they wish, as long as they aren't harming people.

It's a nicely informed piece which lays its points down subtly, and demonstrates how this idea of 'deserving poor' and 'non deserving poor' – read hardworking people vs scroungers – is no new concept.

The second play – The Ruff Tuff… – takes place in a '70s squat in London and though it encapsulates the anarchic and supportive atmosphere of the lives of squatters back then, the plot is a little all over the place. There's an overbearing sense of nostalgia to the characters and the pros and cons of squatting, the politics behind it, aren't satisfyingly explored. What it does show, however, is the idealistic values of a group of people who pushed the establishment and got something done: the story about the state of Frestonia being established in west London as an actual independent state, separate to Great Britain, is a true one.

The third is the best of the night, and has Smith delicately focus on the layering of housing issues we face today. It's coherent and, crucially, very relateable. The piece follows two young couples in the same block of flats. One trying for a baby the other preparing for one. In one flat damp is creeping through the walls but the money to fix it isn't there. In the other, the debates about moving away from the area go back and forth. He wants to stay and enrich the community, she knows the schools are bad. Though they have barely met, each couple can tell the other's tastes and habits through the way bins have been put out and the music they hear through walls. They know each other's business: "we weren't made to live like this", one of them says. And you can really feel it here. The shoving of people on top of each other in urban areas just isn't healthy.

In all, it's a varied night, but it's brought to life by a very strong ensemble of actors and some really interesting moments in-between plays which tell real people's stories. Housing affects all of us and there's most definitely a crisis mounting. Even after all these years Cardboard Citizens's work isn't finished. It's really only just begun.

Home Truths runs at the Bunker Theatre until 13 May.