The piece is said to be about the gig economy, but in truth it is about that shady part of the economy which is purportedly “gig”, but is in truth sham self-employment contracts that condemn the individuals concerned to a form of bonded labour, as the contracts are ludicrously one-sided and are designed to deny the individuals workers rights.
The story of this family plays out in rather typical Ken Loach film fashion. The viewer has a sense of foreboding from the outset. It is a Ken Loach movie after all.
The father of the family, Ricky, buys a van and hopes for a more independent existence as a self-employed van driver. The mother, Abby, is also technically self-employed – i.e. an agency care worker on a zero hours contract.
Things do not go well for them.
There are many good reviews on-line but the Variety one – click here – is comprehensive and interesting.
Bursting with poignant scenes, the most poignant ones, for me, are:
several scenes where Abby, who is full of goodness, wants to look after her charges better but is constantly under time/commercial pressure to move on to the next or work unpaid in her severely limited own time;
when Maloney, the ghastly “gangmaster” at the delivery depot, explains why his depot tops the productivity charts and states that the company ought to erect a statue of him to celebrate his management achievements;
a late scene in which the daughter, Lisa Jane, breaks down and explains that she just wants the family to go back to the way it was before her dad had the van.
Set in Newcastle, there are some moments of humour in it, but not to the same extent as I Daniel Blake, the previous Ken Loach, which Janie and I also rated very highly indeed.
Movies like this tell us a lot about our society; those pockets of society that people like me, Janie and most Ogblog readers are, mercifully, spared.
The acting was excellent; Renee Bailey, Doreene Blackstock, Nneka Okoye and Aasiya Shah all top notch – Janie and I both agreed on that. We also both thought the play well directed by Danial Bailey and we both liked Amelia Jane Hankin’s minimal yet imaginative set.
Not sold out even on a Saturday night, which seemed a shame – the play runs until 7 December – a few weeks yet to run at the time of writing, so click on the image above or click here for ticket information.
I offer space on Ogblog for Threadmashers if placing their pieces in the public domain pleases them; I am delighted and honoured to host any or all such pieces. This time, Kay Scorah has submitted her touching account entitled:
The Gift. Bobo
The Holme Lane Theatre Company – HLTC- specialised in Dickensian tales of poverty and suffering. Inspired by…
…well…
…Charles Dickens tales of poverty and suffering.
Their performances always featured a fierce heroine; Olivia Twist or Nicola Nickleby, who overcame tyranny and liberated the oppressed. This heroine was always slight of build, sharp-witted and fleet of foot. Uncannily like a certain small, skinny girl who always came top of the class and had to run fast to escape the thick bully boys in the neighbourhood.
The cast of HLTC, a motley collection of dolls and soft toys, would rehearse in my attic playroom in Hillsborough, Sheffield, and then head out on tour, which involved moving the entire production down to the living room to play to a captive (as opposed to captivated) audience of long-suffering grown ups, or GUs as we shall call them.
Bobo joined the cast in September 1961. A birthday gift from Granny. The first black doll in our company. She turned out to be the Russian doll of gifts. Which is weird because you don’t come across many black Russians….not outside of a cocktail menu, anyway.
Bobo the doll was just the wrapper around the gift of layers of learning.
Bobo gift 1: Golly has to go. With her movable arms, head and legs and her eyes which closed when she lay down, Bobo was a far more versatile performer than Golly, who just flopped about the place with a fixed grin. And, to be honest, in spite of being rocketed to stardom after having been featured on the side of a jam jar, Golly’s place in the company had been uncertain for some time. Some of our audience did not approve, even threatened to boycott performances, and with Bobo’s arrival… things became very awkward. No. Bobo most certainly could not be expected to work alongside Golly. This was perhaps the only time in history that a black female was given precedence over a male of any hue.
Bobo gift 2: Fluidity in representations of gender. With Golly gone, there were no male cast members. So we became an all-female theatre company. Male characters, if we must have them, were played by girl dolls. In 1961. Yes, The Holme Lane Theatre company was way ahead of its time.
Bobo Gift 3. Questioning the concept of gendered naming. Bobo arrived on a Tuesday. In conversation with Mr Baidu down the street, I learned that Bobo was Ghanaian for “Tuesday child”. I didn’t know that it was Ghanaian for “boy Tuesday child”. Nor did Bobo.
Bobo Gift 4. Heated debates on colonialism, cultural appropriation, integration, assimilation, ancestry, origin, custom…. Some of the GUs argued that Bobo should have an English name, like the other dolls – Wendy, Susan, Lorraine, Katy… “She needs to feel that she belongs.” “Just because she’s black doesn’t mean she isn’t English.” Others defended her right to claim her ancestry…. It could be hard to get their attention back to the play; to Olivia Twist MP’s fight for workhouse reform or Dr Nicola Nickleby’s courageous work among child polio victims.
So, here’s to Bobo, probably the first black female to play the lead in a stage adaptation of a Dickens novel, who, 5 years before the race relations act, called out racism and reclaimed African culture from the colonial Brits, and who, decades ahead of the LGBTQ+ movement gave rise to an all-female, gender non-conforming, cross-dressing theatre company.
Not bad for a doll.
Many thanks again to Kay Scorah for allowing this piece to guest on Ogblog.
Anyway, this time the brief was “The Gift”, with additional instructions to stick to just one page. I took that to mean “one side of a sheet of A4”, but some took it to mean two sides. No matter. I can write something War & Peace epic length next time to get my own back.
I sensed that Rohan Candappa had mischief in mind when he asked us to bring two copies of our text with us.
Once we started Threadmashing, after several of us had dined on goat pie (or whatevs) and made a start on the libations, I also sensed that there might be a mini riot when Rohan announced that we would each be reading someone else’s work rather than our own. But we soon settled down and knuckled down to the additional challenge.
40 years on, Chris Grant still gets head boy privileges.
Chris Grant, a first time Threadmash writer (although not first time attendee) was excused the additional challenge and thus read his own piece as an opener for the evening. It was a charming short piece.
We had each been given a few minutes to read the piece we had inherited.
Quite early in the evening, David Wellbrook read out my piece, which follows below.
David Wellbrook soldiering through my piece
Coincidentally, I was given David’s piece to read; a somewhat Dahlesque horror story, as Rohan had encouraged David to try fiction this time. I did enjoy reading David’s piece I must say. Rohan has strongly encouraged me to try writing fiction for the next one.
He doesn’t look dictatorial, does he? It’s a deceptively gentle form of throat shaking, Rohan’s dictatorial style – sttrong guidance followed by, “but it’s up to you, of course…only if you want to…”
Anyway, here’s my piece which was so capably read by David:
The word “gift” has two distinct meanings as a noun. A gift means something given freely, a present. But it also means a natural ability or talent, such as, “a gift for writing”. When Rohan suggested “The Gift” as his subject for Threadmash Four, I was drawn to the second of these definitions.
These past few years, I have been spending increasing amounts of my time on activities for which I am not naturally gifted, but they are nevertheless activities that I love doing and pursuing. Specifically, I mean sports, such as cricket, plus music. My mother came from a supremely musical family. One branch of her family yielded several notable professional musicians, especially violinists. Even my barber grandfather could, by all accounts, instantly play on the piano any tune you might choose to hum at him.
When I started secondary school, my mother gave me every encouragement to take up and play the violin. But quite quickly, the sound of me practicing, which resembled cats being tortured in a pitch-distorting dungeon, led mum to encourage me to give up violin and try something else. Anything else.
Actually I was growing quite fond of sport. Cricket, tennis and fives mostly. I wasn’t very good at sports either, but I wasn’t going to let an absence of giftedness stop me from trying. Nor was I going to let my own shortcomings stop me from becoming a fascinated follower of my favourite sports. And indeed also a devotee of many varied genres of music.
In truth, although I didn’t inherit the family gift for performing music, I certainly did inherit “a love of music”. And it has occurred to me characteristics such as “a love of music” truly are gifts to be cherished and celebrated.
Where I got my gift for loving sports such as cricket is more of a mystery. Neither of my parents had any interest in sport whatsoever. Not professional sport and certainly not my participation in sport; I don’t think either of my parents ever saw me play sport, other than me mucking about at some nonsense game at home.
Yet, my father’s very last birthday treat included a sporting revelation. The only way to treat my dad towards the end of his life…actually for most of his life…was to take him out for a good meal. As it happened, in 2006, dad’s 87th birthday, fell on a day that Middlesex were playing at Lord’s. I booked at table with a view in the Warner Restaurant, which followed an informal pavilion tour before lunch. They loved it. As dad said, “there aren’t many places I can go now and see people of my own age…apart from old age homes”. The England & Wales Cricket Board marketing folk may use that quote for nothing.
At one point that day, dad mentioned that he and his kid brother Michael had been given a set of cricket equipment by their parents as a gift, when the family moved to Clapham Common in the early 1930s and the boys started a new school there. Neither dad nor Michael had shown any interest in cricket before the gift, apparently, nor did that gift inspire either of them to take the slightest interest in cricket. My grandparents; Eastern European migrants with accents from central casting, were perhaps striving to turn their sons into quintessential English schoolboys through the peculiar sport that is cricket.
I wonder whether my grandparents’ intention with that cricket equipment gift somehow skipped a generation but still subconsciously fueled my love of cricket? A gift indeed.
Chris Grant remarked that he found it really weird hearing words that were so clearly mine coming out of David Wellbrook’s mouth. We have all known each other for over 45 years, so I suppose that is understandable.
All of the pieces were excellent, as usual. I also thought everyone made a good job of reading out someone else’s work, especially as most of us had not started the evening expecting to read something other than one’s own piece.
I caught myself categorising this Ogblog page as both “writing” and “friends and family events” this time. This reflects the fact that Threadmash has become, in my mind and I think those of others, a community of friends who, as it happens, like to gather to read and write together. It’s more than just “a writing thing” now. For all of it, I am grateful to Rohan for innovating and stewarding the ideas.
This time John Eltham came along to be part of the evening, as did Ben Clayson, although the latter arrived after the readings. It became, as always, a convivial gatheirng of interesting and interested people.
I took a few more pictures – all 10 pictures can be found on Flickr by clicking the picture icon below:
Once again, Flossie Pom-Pom, our pink flamingo, started her witchy preparations early……but she hadn’t counted on me nicking her hat this year. She was not well pleased.
Actually the traffic was so bad that early evening that, despite my early getaway from the flat, I arrived in Noddyland after the door-knocking had started, although it was not yet anything like in full sway.
Mostly small groups of little ones with their folks at first
Our local Japanese community turns out in force for Halloween. Indeed I saw a huge posse of Japanese kids with their parents heading up Princes Gardens as I drove past the road on arrival. I guessed that they’d get to our place within 45 minutes to an hour.
More or less on schedule, the larger groups arriveThere’s always one embarassing dad who goes over the top……at least I deploy my “dad dancing” in the privacy of our own home…& blogDaisy conks out at the end of a busy evening……or has she been spellbound by one of Wizard Ged’s fiendish potions???
The horror is to be continued, hopefully, next year.
If you want to see all the pictures, the Flickr link below delivers those:
I wondered whether I had been selected to play simply because the team needed a match reporter, rather than anything to do with my real tennis skills, as the request to report the match came hot on the heels of my selection that day.
Despite a rather embarassing spelling mistake in that inaugural piece, long since corrected, I have again been asked to report on the Dedanist’s Day, which included a Handicap Doubles Tournament, AGM and Dinner at Queen’s.
But I thought I should first write up my personal, some might say idiosynchratic, account of the day, here, on Ogblog.
Thanks to Carl Snitcher for the next four photographs (but not the video) following.
My doubles partner for the day, Tony Friend, arrivingMe, seated in match reporter repose, pen and paper in hand
The tournament included 32 players and played through four mini-leagues of four teams, so each team plays three short matches in the round robin phase. 25 minutes of play with a deciding point if the match was tied. Matches were played on a sliding handicap, which tends to make most matches very tight. The winner of each league qualified for the semi-finals.
The tournament therefore comprised 27 matches. Just as well Queen’s has two courts and books out both for more than six hours for the tournament.
Robin Faux & Michael Shellim, our first pair of opponents
Naturally, my match report will include the pun “Friend or Faux” when describing my first match. One wag also suggested that most of us play real tennis but Robin plays Faux tennis.
But I feel that, for the sake of the Ogblog readership, not all of whom are real tennis enthusiasts, I should cut to the chase and report simply on the single highlight of the day.
And what a chase that highlight was too.
Specifically, a chase of half a yard, which was set by Michael Shellim and can only beaten by landing better than half a yard or by hitting the ball into the dedans for an outright winner. The distances “half-a-yard” and “better-than-half-a-yard” relate to the proximity of the second bounce of the ball to the rear wall.
Most people would attempt to place the ball in the dedans gallery (quite a large target) rather than attempt to beat a chase of half-a-yard on the floor.
But I am not most people.
Also, to be honest, Robin Faux is an experienced enough server to apply heavy spin to his serve in circumstances such as this, in such a way that the dedans shot was well beyond my capabilities.
I simply did the best I could to bunt the spinning ball into the main wall corner, where Michael Shellim was waiting, most probably to allow the ball to bounce in some losing place (i.e. worse or significantly worse than half-a-yard).
My shot somehow contrived to lob with ideal weight and land its second bounce almost exactly in the nick:
Better-than-half-a-yard, wins the chase!
…came the cry from the marker, along with a small cheer from the handful of people in the dedans gallery and even from ultra-good sport Michael Shellim, who was undone by the shot.
Sadly there is no photographic or video record of this particular winning chase, but Janie has a short clip of video from a bout some moons ago, which is a similar bunty shot from a spinning serve. In that case the victim was Iain Harvey (also a Dedanist and one of this day’s semi-finalists) who, much like Michael Shellim, expressed good sporting appreciation of a successful shot – in this case setting half-a-yard.
https://youtu.be/zXU8inu1XXc
Suffice it to say that the point won with my “shot of the day” chase was not sufficient for me and Tony to overcome Michael and Robin. We lost that bout, won our next bout and then, cruelly, in our third match, we lost on the very final point having levelled the score on the penultimate point.
Great experience for me, though, getting to play with and against several people most of whom are way above my pay grade. Fun too.
Me and Tony, barely able to contain our disappointment at the end
The remainder of the day is, again, reported at more length in the official report. A mostly pictorial summary follows. The photographs below are used with the kind permission of Frederika Adam www.frederikaadam.com
There was an AGM:
Then a dinner:
The waiter is named Attila and is actually Hungarian
Then an awards ceremony, during which I picked up the “shot of the day” Champaigne moment award:
Receiving my “shot of the day” award from Josh Farrell. Janie suggests I look a little tired and emotional in this picture.
It was a great fun day; a super way for me to meet and play with many friends of real tennis from around the country.
If you want to see all of the photos from the day, click the picture link below:
…as Stephen Wordsworth of Cara was one of the guests for lunch at the Old Bailey that day and asked me if I would like to attend O’Nora’s forthcoming evening. Of course I said yes.
Monday 28 October – Communication and Democracy in a Digital Age
Lectures steeped in Kantian philosophy are not exactly awash with soundbite takeaways, but one especially good thought did stick in my mind in takeaway fashion; Onora’s assertion that the post World-War Two switch from duties-based philosophies towards rights-based philosophies is proving unhelpful for matters such as regulating social media.
The near-monopolies that deploy/control social media fall back on rights such as freedom of expression, privacy and autonomy while abdicating responsibility for duties such as truthfulness, trustworthiness and consideration for the sensibility of others.
Onora maintained a largely pessimistic line of argument, both in her talk and through the lively question and answer session that followed. I do not share her long-term pessimism on this topic; I think new media tend to go through an unruly phase when they can be especially disruptive to society (by which I mean negatively disruptive) because society and individuals within society take time to adapt to the positive uses of the new media.
In short, as long as we don’t destroy ourselves as a society before the new media settle down, I think those media will settle down and be a force for good to a greater extent than a force for ill.
Still, a fascinating evening, with some food and drink for sustenance as well as for thought after the main event. I met some interesting people for the first time and re-established connections with some others I had met before, including, very briefly, Onora.
Tuesday 29 October 2019, Afternoon, The Old Bailey Court Five
Coincidentally, my return visit to The Old Bailey, to spend a little time seeing a case unfold, was the afternoon following the Onora O’Neill Lecture.
Even more coincidentally, the case I watched for 90 minutes or so was about disseminating terrorist publications through social media. The subject matter of the cases are a matter of public announcement and record, so here and below is a link to the listing for this day:
I watched with several of the people who had taken lunch with the judges that day, including Prue Leith (whom I had not met before) and Crispin Black (whom I had met before).
This was the first time I had sat in on a criminal trial in England; I did sit in on a case in New York some 30 years ago (to be Ogblogged in the fullness of time). It was fascinating for me to see an English criminal trial process at close hand, not least this particularly interesting trial.
There were several binders of material, mostly print-outs from the web, which were being outlined in opening statements that afternoon.
Without making any comment on the contents of those binders as evidence for this case itself, I found it unusually depressing (not a term I use lightly) to wade through the voluminous materials that had been printed out from the web to be used as evidence. I knew of such publications, of course, but had not actually seen, read or heard such materials before.
I also found myself thinking deeply about the lecture the evening before and Onora O’Neill’s pessimism about the impact that social media might have on our society if we do not find ways to regulate and curate such media towards good rather than ill. Despite my theoretical optimism (expressed above), the practical examples before me that afternoon allowed me little room for optimism for the rest of the day.
Tomorrow will be brighter, not least because I shall be spending the day in a very different type of court amongst friends.
Guilty…but only of poor technique
Despite it not making me feel good, I am very glad I went to The Old Bailey that day and that I have now experienced watching part of a trial unfold at close hand. I am grateful to Michael and his shrieval team for organising the visit for me.
Janie and I are a somewhat split jury on this one. I really enjoyed the play, finding it entertaining and suitably dramatic. The first half has a much lighter tone than the second. Janie found the first half rather silly and trivial, while she found the second half too long and ponderous.
If the reviews are anything to go by, I called this one “right”, but don’t tell Janie that. Here is a link to the reviews.
Janie and I were able to agree that the three young performers put in excellent performances. In particular Janie was surprised to learn that Khai Shaw has only just graduated from Rose Bruford, as he seemed so confident and assured in his performance. But all three performers – Anyebe Godwin and Rachel Nwokoro included, are relatively new to the stage yet pulled off superb, energetic performances.
I learn from the programme – which is also a helpful play text with another Kene play, Estate Walls, to read in my spare time – that Little Baby Jesus is actually an early work by Arinzé Kene. The play is being reworked at The Orange Tree some eight years after it was written and performed at the Ovalhouse Theatre. Interesting also that Kene originally worked on the piece with Chè Walker, whose Time Is Love/Tiempo es Amor we very much enjoyed at The Finborough a few months ago:
But returning to Little Baby Jesus, there are signs that it is an early work; I understand Janie’s sense that the first half is somewhat unstructured with the three performers introducing their main characters and also performing a lot of secondary characters to introduce the stories. I found it fun seeing that material unfold but Janie probably wasn’t the only person in the audience who found some of it confusing and the language, at times, hard to penetrate.
The second half has a completely different atmosphere, as the youngsters all, for different but in each case tragic (or potentially tragic) reasons, need to grow up in a hurry.
As is often the case with youthful playwrights (Kene was in his early 20s still when he wrote this piece – what a great sign of burgeoning talent) I could see a little too clearly where some of his ideas came from. Structurally, I was reminded of Faith Healer by Brian Friel. And surely the most shocking scene in the second half, when the youths find an abandoned baby, is partly based on and deliberately reminiscent of Saved by Edward Bond.
But this is the way that fine young writers find their own voice and Arinzé Kene surely has a fascinating voice with colourful stories to tell. I highly commend this production of Little Baby Jesus and I shall surely be looking out for his Kene’s work again.
Possibly a little unfair, then, for me to watch a clip of Ingrid Bergman as Bella and then, a few minutes later, watch Jemima Murphy play the part live. Jemima’s own fault for sending me that link, I suppose.
I had only ever seen Gaslight in its movie forms before – there was also a 1940 British film version directed by Thorold Dickinson (Alfred Hitchcock didn’t make a Gaslight, although many a pundit thinks he did) – but Gaslight is probably more suited as a theatre work than as a film. In any case, Jemima Murphy in particular did well as Bella in the “intimate but not claustrophobic” setting of a 100-or-so seater theatre.
ALL PHOTOS BY WILLIAM WATERWORTH – Jordan Wallace as Jack and Jemima Murphy as Bella
Patrick Hamilton is, for me, a frustrating writer. His novels are intriguing, well-written and have become far better known latterly than during his lifetime, when they mostly flopped. He made his dosh from more crowd-pleasing, melodramatic fare for the theatre; not least Rope and Gaslight.
…yes, but I only Ogblogged it a couple of years ago.
But despite my low expectations from Patrick Hamilton as a playwright, First Floor’s production of Gaslight strangely worked for me.
I’m not sure if the script has been cut; I’m guessing that it has and quite rightly so, if the play was originally as long as most 1930s numb-bum-fests. But in any case the directing and acting focused well on the psychological elements of the play, leaving the melodrama and weak crime thriller plot mercifully in the background.
It is, after all, the psychological elements of this play that give it enduring relevance. Gaslighting has become a verb in psychological parlance, increasingly used to describe the several forms of domestic, mental abuse depicted in the piece and sadly all too common in our society.
Just imagine if the term Ogblogging were to become a verb? At least that would be positive rather than negative activity. I don’t think anyone has ever felt trolled by an Ogblog reference.
But I digress. Gaslight.
Rough justice? Jemima Murphy as Bella with Joe McArdle as Rough
Fine supporting work especially from Joe McArdle as Rough, Rebecca Ashley as Elizabeth and Grace Howard as Nancy. In truth Jordan Wallace seemed under-powered for his role as Jack in the first act; I suspect the young actor was very nervous at the start of press night. The slow start in the first act is not helped by the script, but it is quite a short act (there are four) and the piece warms up quite quickly. Jordan Wallace came into his own in the final act, during which his bullying became more sinister and…
***SPOILER ALERT***
…Jack’s comeuppance worked very well. The final act was far and away the highlight for me, with all of the performers well warmed up and neatly directed.
Writer and performer Sabrina Mahfouz pulls no punches in blaming colonial powers past and present for many of the Middle East’s woes. While taking care to avoid attacking particular Middle-Eastern peoples, her lens does therefore focus almost exclusively on colonial interests without considering the intra-Middle-Eastern proxy wars and conflicts that surely also play a major part in the multifarious problems in that region.
But it would be impossible to be historically comprehensive and profoundly nuanced in a 70 minute piece that also seeks to entertain as well as inform. This piece does both with aplomb.
Along with Sabrina Mahfouz, highly talented multi-instrumentalist musician/composer Kareem Samara, plus excellent performers Laura Hanna (who sings magnificently) and David Mumeni (who doesn’t), have pulled off a superb performance piece.
At one point Mumeni sings, karaoke-style, a Suez Canal version of Sweet Caroline that would have worked in NewsRevue had that show started in 1956 rather than 1979. Personally I’d have tidied up some of the scansion, but we’ll let that pass; I suspect the scansion deficiencies were deliberate, for effect. Laura Hanna’s operatic-style aria for an heroic female plumber in Jordan 30 years hence was also an absolute highlight for me.
But despite the fun aspects, the piece is also about that troubled region and impending crises. While campaigners of the Extinction Rebellion kind might be accused of exaggerating for effect, this piece points out, accurately, that Yemen is already one of the most profound humanitarian crises the world has ever seen and that is before that sorry nation runs out of water; an imminent disaster with little sign of any redress.
There was so much going on in this piece, Janie and I were both grateful for the playtext-style programme so we could/can read bits of the text on reflection and in discussion.
At the time of writing (the day after we saw the show), there are still some tickets available for the Royal Court run. Here is a link that finds reviews and the like. We hope this piece gets a transfer and thus a wider audience. It is intelligent, informative, entertaining and witty. We’d recommend this piece/production highly.
