All the world’s a stage...In four and a half years the world’s biggest stage will be in London’s East End at Stratford when it hosts the 2012 Games. Tonight’s stage was also in Stratford, but in the less obvious location of the concourse of Stratford Station.
Right amongst the tube lines, the overgound trains and the Docklands Light Railway – with waves of commuters weaving their way home, ant-like - a most remarkable piece of live drama takes place.
A couple of hundred of us are perched on a generous balcony overlooking the modern concourse and we’re wired for sound with a track of ambient music in our headphones. Fragments of a conversation break through the music. Soon we realise that the protagonists are below us. Gary and Steve are hardly your standard theatrical heroes. Some kind of misfit street traders with a rich array of personal issues, they encounter a couple of potential punters out to score a major deal. The two city slickers are from the other end of town – polar opposites – high pressure, high value corporate lives. They start with every polished boardroom tactic to score the deal – subtle and silky smooth at first, but rapidly descending into desperation, abuse and total contempt for the non-compliant traders. Engrossing though this mini drama about the meeting of social strata is, the real theatre is all around them.
No theatrical set could be more spectacular – angular shapes of the dramatic modern architecture, trains bustling in and out every couple of minutes and the sheer fascination of watching thousands of commuters rushing through the imaginary proscenium arch. I find myself trying to spot the actors from the rest of the travellers. What about the young man who decides, impromptu to ride down the escalator banister with a final flourish as he plunges off the end? Or perhaps the two suited business men who, seeing a seated audience above them, stop to take a bow and blow adoring luvy kisses? Or the older woman who stands back to back with our misfit traders deeply engrossed in her evening paper and apparently oblivious to the performance?
The truth, of course, is that it doesn’t matter. A huge rail terminus in a high octane community like Stratford is simply full of drama – visually thrilling if you take the time to look carefully, and rich in all forms of human existence. The actors are excellent but mostly because they’re in harmony with what’s around them.
“Small Metal Objects” comes from an Australian Company called Back to Back Theatre. Its part of the Barbican’s “Bite” season and presented by the Theatre Royal Stratford East. Kerry Michael’s Theatre Royal is always challenging and provocative and has become a beacon for young local talent. Another current production is a powerfully remixed production of Jean Genet’s “The Blacks”. It was bound to polarise audiences and critics but you can’t leave the production without feeling disturbed, thoughtful, and impressed by a wonderful cast.
The world will witness great sporting drama just up the road in 2012, but there’s plenty more that Stratford can put on show for the next four and a half years.
