REVIEW: Little Revolution, Almeida Theatre ✭✭

Photo: Manuel Harlan Little Revolution Almeida Theatre 2 September 2014 2 Stars

Two policemen have a young black man, who is wearing a hoodie, in an armlock. An interrogation of some sort is happening but there is something a little odd about it. The air is charged with tension. The London riots of 2011 are a palpable presence. Another black youth challenges the police officers. What are they doing and why? What reason do they have to be interrogating the lad? One Police officer is supercilious; the other, silent as a tomb. Both judgmental.

The inquisitive youth asks questions. No answers. Belligerence from the Officers. Intelligent boy asks for the details of the loud Officer, proof he is a policeman. The Officer refuses, obfuscates, pointing to the lettering on his flak jacket, refusing to produce official ID. The smart boy presses. The Officer snarls and refuses, claiming the apprehended lad wants to move away, wants to be interrogated privately. The smart boy asks for proof of identity, firmly, bravely, perhaps a little accusation of harassment in his tone. The Officer asks him who he thinks he is: someone who knows what he is talking about?

The sense of power against powerless, white against black, class against class, superiority against bewilderment thunders through the silence of the auditorium, where not a single person was smiling or feeling comfortable.

This is one of two electric moments in Joe Hill-Gibbons' production of Alecky Blythe's verbatim play, Little Revolution, now playing (in previews) at Rupert Goold's Almeida Theatre.

The other comes at the end of the play. But, hold that thought.

This is a play drawn from the real experiences of people who endured the London riots and their aftermath. The trick here, one of theatrical form, is that Blythe spent time on the streets of London taping conversations with Londoners dealing with the crisis in various ways. The tapes were threaded together, to form a narrative of sorts, and the cast have assiduously learnt the words, the rhythms, the accents, the speech patterns of each of the interviewees - presumably to add authenticity.

So this theatrical performance, which lasts about 85 minutes (and at that is about 60 minutes too long) seeks to be both authentic and dramatic; a tapestry which attempts to address the complexities which underpinned the riots and the further complexities which were the strands woven together in their aftermath - the arrests, the evictions, the attempts at community healing, the confrontations, the class divides, the bitter recriminations, the foolish do-Gooding, the police brutality, the Government and legal response, and the community incomprehension.

The trouble is that it has no really coherent purpose, no through line and very little heart. Snatches of conversations out of context build a general picture of confusion, miscommunication, distrust and misunderstanding, but there is nothing insightful here. Those who lived through the riots know all of this, may still be scarred by it. Those who didn't will not get any true sense of that explosive, uncertain time or the searing months that followed.

A jolly street tea party to help neighbour talk to neighbour may be one image from that aftermath, but it is scarcely the most important or the one with most resonance. Yet, it is the tea party which is a central focus here.

Still, there is some clever acting. Rufus Wright is perfect in all his roles - unwanted BBC journalist, the sneering Policeman, a comical reporter from Das Spiegel. All are fine characters, expertly shaped and splendidly delivered. Imogen Stubbs is perfect as the do-gooder modern day Barbara from The Good Life with little notion of what to do, but marked by a permanent welcoming smile. Bayo Gbadamosi is superb as the youth who stands up to the Police, and in a variety of other roles. Lloyd Hutchinson, Melanie Ash, Barry McCarthy and Lucian Msamati are all very good at fleshing out a series of eccentric characters.

The production utilises what it calls a Community Chorus, 31 volunteers, aged between 16 and 74. Blythe states in the programme that she "definitely couldn't do" the play without them. They act as supernumeraries, silent sometimes, hooting and hollering at others; they menace, brood, smile and dance. Sometimes they speak. They bring the sense of diversity and numbers to every scene.

But surely there are trained actors who could have done all this? For a play which, at its heart, concerns the fault lines in society caused by indifferent or inconsistent treatment, pay, opportunities, justice and classification, is it really a sound notion to have 31 unpaid performers working alongside 12 paid performers? If the play couldn't be done without them, why can't they be paid? They may enjoy it or be humbled by the experience (one of them says this in the Programme) but then one can presume that the rioters and looters enjoyed the Riots and that their families were humbled by being evicted from their homes when a family member was convicted and the Council evicted them. Not sure such experiences are devoutly to be wished.

Lingering disquiet about this comes home to roost in the play's final scene. Blythe, who plays herself and presumably gets herself correctly, returns to the estate where she had spent months researching among the community. She has been absent for 6 months doing a job for the BBC. She thinks she can return and pick up with the locals where she left off. She thinks that the results of a Court case will be incendiary in the neighbourhood. And she wants to be there, to document reactions.

Except she completely misjudges every aspect of her return. The void between her grasp of the community she spent so much time in and observed so intensely and the reality for that community is skin-crawlingly Grand Canonesque.

But in a very clear way, that final scene encapsulates perfectly the central issue the play seeks to address: the entitled or well off white establishment, who make decisions and judgments every day about the lives of less well-off communities, have no idea what makes those communities tick or what they need or what they think or feel. The Little Revolution needs to be bigger and it needs to happen in the establishment itself, not amongst its victims.

And Blythe's final scene, bravely, it has to be said, shows her complicity in not understanding that.

Ian MacNeil has transformed the Almedia space into the kind of space you might expect at the Bush Theatre. It's odd and makeshift and a little riotous in its own way, with the audience scattered through and around the performance spaces, the house lights mostly permanently on, creating a sense of commonplace ordinariness, of lack of funds, of squalor and making do.

I found Guy Hoare's lighting design intensely irritating. The directorial/design trick is to flicker lights when transitioning between unrelated scenes or when actors assume different roles. It is jarring at first and then just plain annoying.

In the end, I think what Blythe has achieved here would be more powerful, more potent, as a radio play with the authentic voices of the real people involved in the riots providing the drama, the interest, the poignancy. While it is interesting to see actors attempt to duplicate real persons' speech, it is also rather pointless where, as here, that speech is the very thing intended to catch the conscience of the audience.

As an arresting theatrical experience, this is not on the radar.

Little Revolution runs Tue 26 Aug 2014 - Sat 4 Oct 2014 Box Office 020 7359 4404 or Online