It’s not always possible to see every play. This initiative (in its third year) encourages us (and hopefully others) to read more widely. And, as achieved in 2015, we shall try to choose 26 male playwrights and 26 female playwrights for our play choices. The plays from the first half of this year can be seen here.
Judy Upton’s most famous play is Ashes and Sand (Royal Court, 1994). One of the most prominent plays
to be attributed with the hindsight in-yer-face label, Upton’s play, focusing
on a Brighton girl gang, explores a generation with little hope of a bright and
prosperous future. What sticks out in that play is the anger of its lead
characters. More than just shock tactics or an aesthetic, Ashes and Sand is a stinging play about the effects of a long and
no doubt seemingly ceaseless Tory rule.
This short play premiered roughly a year after Tony Blair’s
victory in 1997 but the promises of New Labour are not on display here. Jane
and Bonnie live in the same block of flats. Jane is the nosy neighbour type
whose husband is in a private care home which she struggles to afford. Bonnie
is a single mum with a young child struggling to get by. Yet they are plunged
into a legal dispute when Bonnie’s son gets in the way on the stairs leaving
Jane to fall down them and injure herself, opening up the opportunity for her
to try and get some money out of Bonnie. Taking the form of two interweaving
split stage monologues, Know Your Rights sees
two very different people’s shared welfare, money and job worries come to a
head.
Neither of them fully realise the financial worries of the
other. Bonnie (played by Noma Dumezweni in the original production at the
Battersea Arts Centre) is on benefits but is forced into a job on the side at
Safeway because they’ve been lowered slightly. When Jane finds out, Bonnie is
fired and her benefits cut leaving her desperate for money and pushed into
putting Jake into care for a few days whilst she decides somewhere else to live.
If you’re using this play as a look into what the late nineties under Tony
Blair was like, it paints an interesting depiction of New Labour Britain. Cassette
tapes and since-shutdown supermarkets aside, there are problems with housing,
healthcare and benefits. The Helping Hands centre is now a Dunkin’ Donuts, and a
No Win No Fee injury claim culture seems part of a financial opportunism which
leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It perhaps doesn’t quite have the same anger
as Ashes and Sand, or at least it does
but with less dramatic impact. Nor does it quite have the same imagination as
some recent #ReadaPlayaWeek choices from 1990s’ fringe theatre.
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