Paul T Davies reviews Teach by Matthew Roberts now playing at Surgeons Hall as part of the Edinburgh Fringe 2019.
Teach.
Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
7 August 2019
5 Stars
Book Tickets
The bar has been set high for my Fringe experience this year in the first show I attended. Writer and director Matthew Roberts has created a piece forged from the heart, the mind and his experience of teaching. We all know the profession is underfunded, under attack, and here is the front line. Threading through the play are facts from the book, How To Survive in Teaching by Dr Emma Kell, and the statistics are frightening. Yet this piece is performed with such passion that the experience is uplifting.
The text blurs the line between the autobiographical and the factual, and at three key points, Roberts asks the audience to vote on whether he should leave teaching or not. Just to underline, this is a real-life teacher posing that question, and the results have been astonishing to him. We are told of the lessons that changed his life, from dragons Chinese and Welsh, tales from the family, and being a gay man in a profession under attack from anti-LGBTQ protests. Knife crime is beautifully dealt with. And there is no safe guarding for teachers whom pupils have confided in.
Director Helen Tennison wisely allows the right amount of anarchy balanced with poignancy and sadness.
Then, brilliantly, the fourth wall, which has been fragile throughout the piece, is shattered as Roberts reminds us of what we all can teach and learn from each other. This is just the beginning for this play, Roberts will perform the epilogue at the Fund Schools Now rally, marching in Westminster on September 27th. It’s a call to arms for anyone who has been in a classroom. Which is all of us. Become part of this revolution and catch this show, which brought cheers from my audience, at it’s beginning.
