Cable Street @ Southwark Theatre (Elephant), London
HEY! If you aren’t concerned about Fascism, racism, poor working conditions and high rents ….and your fellow people — what you even doing? Grabbing us lyrically by the lapels and getting us to have a good look at ourselves, Tim Gilvin and Alex Kanefsky’s musical Cable Street moves beyond ‘they shall not pass’ glory to the wider socio-economic cultural context. Both before and after….
Contrasting the 1930’s with now through a tour party, with some descendants of the 1930’s Cable Street residents in the midst, we travel backwards and forwards in time. As with Standing At the Sky’s Edge, we get multiple households on stage at the same time, and as with so many shows from the Seagull onwards, a stripped down set — just a counter and some chairs and tables to be…everything… Kudos to Director Adam Lenson, and Musical Supervisor/Vocal Arrangements Tamara Saringer and Musical Director Ellen Campbell for all they’ve achieved here. Not to mention Jevan-Howard Jones’s dynamic movement and choreography. Sit up high and you can see the band playing away — I had a great view of the pianist/keyboardist. The guitarist even pops down to join the main stage action at points.
A musical with some spoken parts — it has huge energy, a really beautiful and moving score, and an even bigger heart. I was enthralled from the first beat — and didn’t want it to end. Though it teeters into Operation Mincemeat comedy twerking Nazi territory, it veers away from that and does a very difficult job exceptionally well of showing why someone (Ron) would want to follow Moseley’s Blackshirts, to become part of them, to turn on their neighbours and friends, to suddenly see them as ‘other’ and ‘undesirable’, people who needed to be cleared out, stopped from ‘stealing’ jobs and made to ‘go home’. Literally ‘Let me in’. Danny Colligan does an equally brilliant job of making a working class Fascist human, tender, understandable, to be more than a symbol and a cypher, a figure of fun and hate. Goodness, while we hate his views and his hateful fear-driven actions, we feel compassion for him as a troubled and desperate human being. When he gives the Fascist solute, it’s stomach churning, not just because the symbol is evil, but because there’s a human being we’ve related to (up to that point) behind it. Even the more Mincemeaty Blackshirts still retain their humanity, and help us to understand what was going on in their heads and hearts.
More could have been done to show how much Fascism was a youthful movement, turning against the old order and old guards , who seemed to have failed and willfully decimated the youth in World War One. Here it’s shown as a jokey movement of upper class twits to an extent. However, we also feel Ron’s deep shame at the end as he faces up to the ethics of what his beliefs have caused and brought him to. A really intriguing musicalised version of radicalisation to de-escalation.
The ordinariness of British Fascists is thoroughly underlined when the same actor switches from British Fascist bully to singing a heartfelt song from a Jewish father’s perspective ‘Only Words’. It’s a heart-rending and shocking moment — thrills and chills galore. What we need to face up to is that people like us (now and then) turned to extremism and Fascism — and part of it is down to lack of jobs, of decent living wages, poor housing and living conditions, terrible rents and certain sections of society (in this case the urban working class) just not being listened to.
The musical also takes us beyond the glory and triumph of ‘They Shall Not Pass’ (used so brilliantly in The Merchant of Venice 1936) to what happened next. And what happened next was dire — and I don’t know why we don’t discuss it more. I never knew this history until this moment. The Blackshirts came back, created more public disorder through their own version of Kristallnacht — apparently tossing Jewish British citizens (including a child) through smashed shop glass windows.
Whilst it’s a difficult one, the police don’t come out of this well — police horses were used to charge and trample those trying to defend themselves and their own homes and businesses from an unwanted public protest. It’s like little was learnt from Peterloo. From this perspective, the Battle of Cable Street seems to be as much about people fighting the police as fighting Fascists. There’s so much to think about here — about how rule of law is often more about property than people, about how the law is used (and who for), about whose law the police are being used to enforce — and why. At the end the same law is being used by corrupt and greedy landlords to turn people out of their homes — and the same neighbours come together to proclaim ‘ they shall not pass’. All of this can only promote a call to be better and active citizens.
I adored the character of the fiery and outspoken female Communist Mairead (Sha Dessi), who had a gorgeous Pogues meet Thin Lizzy/Big Country riff going the whole time and not just in their big song moment of ‘What’s Next’. Meanwhile, a Jewish man Sammy (Joshua Ginsberg) tried to avoid everyone and seemed to be in everyone’s way, just trying to get work — and getting an awful lot of grief in the process. A gentle Lancashire working class man (Ron) moved recently to the big smoke longs for work to be able to care for his widowed/husbandless mother — and perhaps this adult has been a child carer for too long, as his mother seems to be constantly indoors drinking. At the same time, she’s concerned about him and what he’s about as she sees her son disrespecting the neighbours who are so kind to her and reading hateful pamphlets., Accidentally, Ron, a gentle, caring man, almost fatally brutalises the kindly and intelligent son of the Jewish family next door. Which sets the brother of this man on a path to revenge — and definitely looking to get in one person’s way…
Whilst it’s about culture class to a degree, the class clash and classism is the bigger issue. It’s about how government and the ruling classes viewed the working classes during a time of political upheaval and economic depression; how ethnicities and religious groups were stereotyped and targeted, and how everyone fought to survive — together — and apart.
There’s a sadness here too as it’s implied that one of the Jewish sons dies in the Spanish Civil War — I was longing for a romantic runaway to America and new lives and freedom. We do get a romantic ending, but it seems — not for long. But the poetic female Communist does get her work published — in America — it seems, and have her opportunity to do something, to leave her bitter, dependent family, to achieve bread and roses.
I adored the music, both score and lyrics, as well as how perfectly integrated the songs were to all of the action and events. Didn’t see a singing, dancing Daily Mail coming! What would be interesting is to have the music a bit more influenced by the 1930’s popular songs (some crooning, some pub knees-up, Lambeth walk!) and a bit more diversity from the East End community to bring out individual characters more fully. More blues and jazz for example. I guess what I wanted was more of the characters to have their own theme tune as Mairead did to reflect more of their individual backgrounds. However, this is all small stuff being sweated, because the concept and realisation of the musical is so darn perfect as is! and still incredibly nuanced.
HEY! Enjoy the wonderful mimed baking scenes. Stress as the Blackshirts invade people’s businesses, such as the bakery, and hunt for ‘unwanted’ Jews. Enjoy the culture clash (which really works) as Gentiles work in kosher bakeries making kosher products for everyone, enjoyed by everyone — such as bagels. Sit out front and be leafleted (by both Fascists and Communists) and thrill to the shouts of ‘No pasarán!’ as you almost become part of the action. Admire the precision movements of cast and props — to form homes, dining rooms, Shabbat, bakery counters, pubs and barricades. On a reduced Warhorse style we do get to see one of the fearsome police horses coming against people trying to protect their own families and communities from unwanted political agitation. We also encounter both the vulnerability and strength of the women ‘personing’ the barricades and organising lobbing of home grabbed missiles out of nearby windows by homemakers and elders. As ever women work hard.
What needs to be developed is the dancing afterwards as the victory jigging was half-hearted, and the cast stopped too soon. I think viewpoint played a part here as they didn’t want to block the audience’s view (with each other).
Better developed was the wider context — the Spanish Civil War and the global Fascist vs Communist clashes, and the dockers and the strikes...Even they shall not pass was a global phrase. What could have been developed more fully was people looking to the homes they’d left and worrying about what they were hearing from home, in hints, whispers and rumours. (Or in the case of Fascists admiring). Again, minor quibble as the storytelling was so strong throughout — and who can remain dry eyed listening to ‘Only Words’, or not soar to ‘Bread and Roses’ for everyone? Referencing the Ripperology tours so grimly popular now (and how they fail to take account of the communities impacted), the musical holds a truthful mirror up at us getting us to consider the appalling treatment of the Grenfell community and the summer 2024 riots in the UK. Whether in 1936, as now, we can consider if people we see as ‘trouble’ are in fact here to stay, to build lives and families, whether words are only words. The expectations and hopes we have for, as well, as of and about others: ‘Bread and Roses’. Whether them is infact my and me, our: ‘ My Street’ is our Street — is there and can there be room? Does everyone really agree that this is ‘My Street’?
And much, the musical suggests, can be mended through the shared joy of communal bagel eating… I really love how the plot of revenge was worked out and we weren’t given easy answers, but neighbourly bagels help. No more ‘Stranger Sister’. L’chaim!
Do listen to the score — it’s incredible — https://soundcloud.com/cable-street-musical
Hopefully, Cable Street will return (the musical, not the hate and riots)…
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