Cutting the Tightrope is a powerful piece of no-holds barred theatre

The Herald Scotland

4 hours ago

Church Hill Theatre
Neil Cooper
Four stars
What to do when artists are told by those bankrolling them not to say certain things lest the plug be pulled on them? In the case of those behind this compendium of bite-size plays responding to Art Council England's guidelines warning those in receipt of public funding not to be 'political', you do the exact opposite of what was asked. Leaving aside the very obvious truism that all art is political, the result is a series of urgent statements on the ongoing atrocities being carried out in Palestine and elsewhere.
The show begins with one of the eight-strong ensemble stepping out as a festival director attempting to rein in those programmed. The theme is continued in the next piece, in which the dead victim of a bombing attempts to pitch their story to a theatre director, only to be sidelined with a litany of bureaucrat-speak.
A young man brings his artist activist girlfriend home to his middle class parents who would rather not discuss uncomfortable topics. A flower seller reminisces about life before the invasion and the man who bought different flowers for each of his girlfriends. A Zionist writer giving a presentation is interrupted from the stalls by an anti-Zionist Jewish playwright.
Most powerful of all is 46 Women, based around the incident when Westminster MP Diane Abbott tried in vain to speak in a debate forty-six times after a Tory donor allegedly said she made him hate all black women, and needed 'to be shot.' As women rise from the audience to ask each question, it becomes a vital reclaiming of power.
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With writers of the calibre of Dawn King, Ed Edwards and Philip Arditti on board alongside Zia Ahmed, Nina Bowers and Hassan Abdulrazzak, rather than be credited individually, the twelve playwrights behind the works are listed as a collective. Equal responsibility for the plays also goes to Mojisola Adebayo, Roxy Cook, Ahmed Masoud, Sami Abu Wardeh and cast members Waleed Elgadi and Joel Samuels. Each act ends with a ferocious monologue, with the latter seeing a young Muslim attempting to walk to Walthamstow following outbreaks of violence after three children were killed in Southport by what was wrongly claimed to be an asylum seeker.
Originating at London's Dalston based grassroots Arcola Theatre, all this is brought to life by directors Cressida Brown and Kirsty Housley with Zainab Hasan on a stage lined with the sort of plastic orange bucket seats that look leftover from a 1980s job centre. This inadvertently reflects how the dole was regarded at the time by many would be artists as an unofficial form of funding, no questions asked.
Those days may be long gone, but the desire to create contentious work remains. The series of statistics of the daily horrors in Palestine projected on to the stage may break Arts Council England's guidelines as much as the plays, but both bring home the of the moment call to arms that matters more.
Until August 17th