The Me Show in the Everyman Studio is not that different from Of Mice and Men which is playing in the main house. Both have strong socialist principals, both are about striving to attain a dream and both involve a certain amount of digging. The difference is that the Steinbeck piece is a fully fledged, dramatically sound piece of theatre, a real play, whereas MultiStory Theatre’s offering is more cerebral, more in your face with its ideas and ideals.
This is the dilemma with “political” theatre – do you enclose your message, your beliefs, your quest for a better, a fairer society in a drama with lots of clearly defined characters playing out a situation from which, hopefully, your message becomes clear or do you stand down stage centre and sock it to your audience between the eyes? The Me Show is somewhere in between.
Of Mice and Men is a play with solid socialist credentials, yet the dream central to the story is the ownership, by the two leading characters, of a small plot of land – the fruits of which they can live off. The Me Show, on the other hand, starts with a woman in an English village digging up the local common for the benefit of the community, land which she believes has been appropriated over time by the villains of the piece, the local squires. All well and good, but during the play convincing arguments are made by the squire and by other villagers about why the scheme won’t work. It demonstrates that socialism is alright in theory and that while the mantra of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’, is hard to argue with, it flows contrary to human nature and will always fail.
I was not sure on which side of the fence MultiStory was situated or whether they were perched on the top. The arguments they made for the end to ownership of land and for the redistribution of wealth were ably and persuasively challenged by other characters portrayed in the piece and the very fundamentals of socialism were confronted so well that it was difficult to know exactly where the writers stood. This is not a criticism, on the contrary, it is good to see the case put forward without the dogma usually attached to it. This was as much a forum for discussion as a manifesto.
And Bill Buffery and Gill Nathanson, who are MultiStory, put on a good show. They are two very accomplished and confident actors who obviously know what they think, know what they want to say and know how to say it. Their plays are well thought out, well performed and, most importantly, balanced – there is nothing worse than a rant on stage purporting to be a play.
The main story is about a woman wanting to use the village common land for the common good, but interwoven is a thread of another, a government (GCHQ?) whistle-blower, whose beliefs land her in hot water. It’s all about standing up for what you believe in. Both women do what they believe in but do either make any difference to anyone else’s lives apart from their own? No, is the answer. Is sacrificing yourself for your beliefs and the common good effective or worthwhile? That is a decision few us will have to make. Was there ever a fair society, can we ever have a better, brave new world? I doubt it, not when there are people in it. ★★★★☆ Michael Hasted 26th February 2016
