“The wealth has been distributed differently, but they take your house too”
The Spanish take on The Big Idea featured the short plays Chalk Land by Vanessa
Montfort and Merit by Alexandra Wood, interspersed with some verbatim accounts
of interviews that Montfort conducted with some Spanish people. Though the last
to be performed, this was actually the first of the set that I watched but I genuinely
did find it hugely engaging from start to finish. Director Richard Twyman
ensured that Chalk Land had the visual humour, though of a distinctly
bittersweet note, to accompany the conversation between a homeless man and a
passer-by full of indignance at the injustice of the world, Robert Lonsdale and
Mariah Gale pairing up well.
And Wood’s Merit was a fascinating look at the ethical compromises people are
willing to make in terms of getting and securing a job, but also at the ethics
of friends and family around us from whom we might well benefit. Meera Syal and
Paul Chahidi as the parents pussyfooting around their concern for their
daughter, Gale again full of righteous fire, both giving excellent performances.
I really enjoyed the verbatim accounts though, raising the powerful issue of
how media coverage of austerity shies away from the ordinariness of so many of
the victims and preferring to focus on stock images of poverty-ridden people in
order to separate ‘them’ from ‘us’ even as the dividing line has become so
blurred as to not even exist any more.
And because I was enjoying the theatre so much, the filming of it didn’t bother
me half as much as it did when watching Masterpieces, so perhaps it is less of
a deal than I originally thought. Especially considering that this format is
hugely widening access to these punchy new plays, it does feel a little
churlish to criticise the quality too strongly. But in any case, if you’re only
going to watch one of these PIIGS films, I’d go for Spain.
Labels: Alexandra Wood, Meera Syal, Nadia Clifford, Paul Chahidi, Robert Lonsdale, Vanessa Montfort
