Theatre

Killing Swine

Alan Hindle | Sunday 14 August, 2011 13:27

A boy and a girl from different sides of the track fall in love and have a baby. A class of young drama students prepare a production of Macbeth. It’s 90210 with a conch shell meets Romeo and Juliet and The Grudge. At a Halloween party some months earlier, however, a crime was committed which now festers, a virulent poison, in all of them. A seed, not necessarily of evil, but of selfishness, discontent, and vengeful retribution. Cliques and rivalries form, petty jealousies and general bitchiness prevail, and grow-ups are pointedly absent. Upstaged Theatre, the production company based at Centre Stage School of Performing Arts have devised as rather astonishing play. While not created as a reaction to the recent riots, the production provides one of the sharpest insights into its causes.

The show is actually more heavily influenced by Lord of the Flies than Macbeth. It’s as though the kids have been shipwrecked at the school, left only suitcases full of nearly-adult neuroses and plenty of white laundry. This is a school production, albeit one of impressive maturity, and while I could single out individual performances that were stronger or weaker, I will instead say that a calm centre and confidence has been instilled in every performer, which is quite an accomplishment. The entire cast are capable of holding their moment in the spotlight and add cumulatively to the overall production. A few performers were stand-out. Emily McCabe and Caleb Roberts as the couple in love were brilliant, and their storyline, running alongside the tumult of the drama school before dovetailing into the madness, was both funny and powerful. McCabe somewhat overdoes the mannered “crazy acting” at the end, and she needn’t have. A more retrained demonstration of her madness would have been even more effective. But that’s a quibble.

At one point in the show one of the characters has an epiphany regarding Macbeth. In Shakespeare’s epic slasher, prior to the story opening, the Thane of Cawdor and his murderous wife have lost a child. Filled with rage and grief, angry at God for taking their child, they vent their bitterness at the nearest thing to God on Earth- the King. They want someone to pay. Anyone. This is used to make a surprisingly acute observation of the last week or so, and the last forty years. There’s a line from my favourite movie which goes, “We are the children of children, and we do as we are shown.” Children are damaged goods once they have parents, and whether they are moulded, broken, or overreacting against what they find at home, most of the ills of society can be laid at the door of mum and dad. That society, made up of mums and dads howling over youth going wrong, is now calling upon David Cameron to break out the water cannons rather than tracing the roots of the problem back to its source- a combination of home and government, which are very similar- is indicative of the problem itself. Hooded teenagers are smashing and stealing and the papers and politicians call it wanton criminality. They say it is cynical to pretend there in any economic or societal link to the riots. In fact, the opposite is true. It’s cynical to say otherwise. No, not cynical. Childish. Bullingdon Clubsters Boris and Cameron, teen arsonist Clegg, Murdock and bankers and countless others have been stealing from the cookie jar for many years, and now there are only a few crumbs left. Crumbs of money, respect, and reason. The children see no reason not to smash the cookie jar. What’s left in it for them to leave it whole? Their future has been stolen and spent and parents (of other, better children, obviously) imagine their thuggishness came from nowhere. (As I write this the editor of Snipe quotes an African adage he’d just heard somewhere, which says “You must invite the children into the village or they will burn it down to feel the warmth.”) Killing Swine might have been written by Centre Stage teacher Will Hammond, but he has obviously been listening very closely to his students’ grievances.

A few last comments on the play. Hammond’s script and direction are excellent. There is an interminable bit at the end where everybody gets one last monologue, and this is understandable. Every student deserves a chance to shine. As a play, though, it is a huge drag on the action. Some of the imagery, such as the genuinely terrifying rave scene (There are extreme strobe and “3D” lighting effects which made me ill) as a porcine hell was fantastic. The rest is just folks in white stretched across a long room standing around. And finally, a note to the actors. That lovely barn you perform in is still a barn. It eats sound. You need to project and enunciate, even the slang, or it is lost. Otherwise, an exceptional theatre school and I was delighted to have finally got a look in.

Camden Fringe Festival page

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