"You think England is hard? Compared to Nigeria? My dear, you haven’t seen anything yet!"

Immigrant cultural identity and inter-generational conflict may be well -worn themes, but this superb play by Goldsmith’s College writer-in-residence Ade Solanke about a British Nigerian family succeeds in engaging from start to finish.

At times laugh out loud funny, at times heartbreaking, the drama centres around a choice: should British-born single parent Toyin (Anna-Maria Nabirye) accept the place offered to her wannabe gangster teenage son at an elite, disciplinarian Lagos boarding school, as her family and friends beg her to do?

If she leaves him in Nigeria, he may come to resent her decision, as her elder sister is still embittered by their mother’s choice to leave her behind 40 years ago. If she takes him back to London, he may be lost forever in gangland.

Her dilemma exposes the long-held grievances and angst of her family members, and this play is as much about the universal themes of conflict between parents and children as it is about cultural identity.

“But I did what I thought was best for you at the time!” cries her mother in response to her sister’s accusation that she abandoned her as a small girl. “I never knew I would stay so long!”

It is also about raising children and the decisions parents must make. “Nobody has a crystal ball here!” Says Toyin’s friend Bev.

The show’s one weakness is that some of the references to current geopolitical developments feel slightly clumsy and forced in a family drama – who really speaks in lists of facts?

Otherwise, this is a strong script, and brilliant performances by the entire cast (with some spot-on comic timing) make this is essentially a very moving and funny play. Excellent.

Pandora’s Box
Until 26 May 2012

Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Dalston
E8 3DL

Performance times: 7.30pm (matinee 3pm)
Tickets: £14 (£10 concessions)

Box office: 020 7503 1646

Rupert Friend as the mysterious Martin. Photograph: Faye Thomas

When Tom Bates, one of the characters in Dennis Potter’s 1976 play Brimstone and Treacle, yearns for ‘the England I used to know’, he expresses a sentiment that you’re just as likely to hear today.

This month, a revival of Potter’s most controversial play, banned for showing the rape of a disabled woman, is being staged at the Arcola.

It tells the story of Mr and Mrs Bates, an unhappy middle aged couple whose daughter Pattie is in a vegetative state following a hit-and-run accident.

Their home, a claustrophobic, closed environment, is infiltrated by a mysterious outsider, Martin, who earns their trust before raping their daughter.

An uncomfortable portrait of suburban fear, paranoia and xenophobia, director Amelia Sears thinks Brimstone and Treacle is a play for our times.

She says: “There’s a huge aspect of the play which is about people being trapped in a situation where they’re frightened of the world outside.

“At the time it was written there was a recession, IRA bombings and now since September 11 we are in a world where people don’t know who they can trust.

“It seems to me that the play is a metaphor for the country at the moment, with people frightened and wanting something to blame.”

The revival production is set in 1977, the year of the Silver Jubilee. Sears hopes this will help audiences draw a parallel with the current Jubilee year.

“I’ve just inched it forward a couple of years to give it that relevance. Jubilees, they’re such a snapshot aren’t they? They feel like sugar a lot of the time. People embrace it and they get behind it but actually the problems still exist, they’re still there.

“Something we’re interested in is the whole punk movement, with the Sex Pistols releasing God Save the Queen while the Jubilee was going on. It’s that counterpoint that’s really interesting.

“I think the character of Pattie is symbolic of what was happening with punk. She’s trapped in this world where people aren’t communicating and is unable to communicate in a way they accept as normal. So her kind of frustration feels quite synonymous with punk.”

Potter’s plays often attracted criticism for their sexual content, earning him the tabloid nickname ‘Dirty Den’.  But the controversy surrounding Brimstone and Treacle, centring around a rape, was more serious, with the BBC banning the broadcasting of the play for over a decade.

“It’s been definitely a journey of trying to keep my thinking in the right place,” says Sears.

“From a woman’s point of view it’s quite hard to think that essentially the message of the play is that someone comes and a rapes a girl and that it heals her. In the crudest possible sense that’s what was written.

“But for me, when I knew more about Potter and found out he was also sexually abused it made more sense, that it was, in a way, him saying ‘my sexual abuse was not the downfall of me’.

“I think essentially he’s saying, ‘we don’t ever like to consider the possibility that bad things can have positive actions but they can.’ And that’s the way life is. It’s just not the way we like to see stories unfold.”

Sears hopes the production will introduce Dennis Potter to a new audience of those who were not born or were too young at the time to remember his plays.

She adds: “I think there’s a whole generation now that wouldn’t know him. Yet his work still feels incredibly modern. He’s got that irreverence that so many writers don’t have.

“He’s out there saying things bravely. There aren’t many voices like that left. It’s not that he didn’t care what people thought, but he didn’t let it stop him saying what he wanted to say.”

Brimstone and Treacle
Until Saturday 2 June
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Dalston
E8 3DL
Box office: 020 7503 1646

"Horrorshow": A Clockwork Orange at the Arcola

Director Paul Davies insists that the production of A Clockwork Orange now playing at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston should not be looked at as a response to last summer’s riots.

But with its undertone of urban alienation and copious amounts of “ultra-violence”, Anthony Burgess’s linguistically inventive novella and the controversial Stanley Kubrick flick it spawned would seem relevant. Many people will recall Malcolm McDowell’s eyeballs bulging out of their sockets in the penitentiary scenes from that movie – scenes in which Alex, the story’s frightening protagonist, is forced to endure an onslaught of cinematic images in a bid to make him change his violent ways.

Davies’s play, staged by Welsh theatre company Volcano, is an adaptation that he says attempts to take its cue from both Burgess’s 1962 book and the stage script the author later penned. The film seems to be of lesser importance.

“Burgess was unhappy about the film because he felt it was too explicit,” says Davies. “Partly as consequence of the success of the film, many theatres made versions of the play or the book that were loosely based on the film. Burgess, as a consequence of this, wrote his own play script for the theatre … He turned it into a kind of musical in an attempt, I think, to shroud the sort of violence and the unrest of Alex.”

Davies admits that squeezing the dystopian world portrayed by Burgess down to just 75 minutes was a challenge. But says he felt compelled to have a go as previous productions “didn’t really do justice to the words”.

By this he means Nadsat, the horrorshow lingo used by Alex and his droogs (mates) and which Burgess, a super keen linguist, partly based on Russian.

“Burgess was a great wordsmith,” says Davies. “Part of the achievement of A Clockwork Orange is this incredible hybrid language. I was very keen on capturing that. Burgess was of the view that America and Russia were the two inevitable superpowers. But he also had this kind of Welsh influence. His wife was Welsh and she had a big influence on him.”

At the core of the text, says the director, is the question of whether it is better to be forced to do good or to be free to do evil. Burgess was, he says, pointing a finger at figures like the cultural critic FR Leavis and his view, apparently shared by other middle class academics of the time, that the underclass needed to be civilised and exposed to classical music and the likes of Beethoven, or, as Alex calls the composer, “lovely lovely Ludvig van”.

Davies says: “It’s so clever that Alex loves Beethoven, but he also kills someone accidentally and he rapes a couple of girls and basically enjoys beating people up. I think the text reminds us that if people are not having a good time, densely populated urban areas are going to go up. Burgess was thinking about it and writing it when there were riots in Russia and the teddy boy phenomenon and all that in the UK. Unless youth has got something gainful to do, especially in today’s climate, it’s going to engage in practices that the bourgeois class, and I include myself in that, are going to be slightly horrified by.”

So, there is a connection to the riots and the state of London today? “The sense of alienation in some parts of inner London is palpable,” Davies says. “The sense of unbelonging at every level … the sense of alienation from what it is to be alive there and then, from your own language, from your means to feed yourself, from camaraderie, from community…”

But there is hope in Burgess’s dark tale – something Davies says Kubrick’s film with its bleak Thamesmead settings failed to capture.

“Burgess wrote a redemptive chapter,” he says “which Kubrick didn’t include in the film. Alex comes out of prison, decides he’s had enough. He’s changing, etcetera, etcetera. He sort of decides that he wants to have a child. Burgess was a cultural conservative or sorts. He didn’t place a great deal of faith in modernity. I don’t know if this final chapter was his way of talking about the institution of the family and how that can be a good thing for people.”

The play, with its cast of five, has been somewhat unfavourably reviewed, but readers can decide for themselves until its run ends later this month.

A Clockwork Orange
Till Saturday 21 April
Arcola Theatre, Dalston
For tickets call 020 7503 1646.

Paul Rhys in Complicite's The Master and Margarita at the Barbican. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ill-fated attempt at adapting Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita for the theatre led him to pronounce the great Russian novel unstageable. In film, no lesser icons than Roman Polanski and Federico Fellini have tried and failed to transfer the tale from page to screen. So who would dare to venture where such greats have stumbled?

Step forward Simon McBurney. As a founder and artistic director of Complicite, McBurney has quietly become a doyen of modern British theatre, consistently challenging convention by utilising all manner of dramatic devices in the company’s increasingly inventive productions. This project presented him with the biggest trial to date, and it comes as no surprise that the resulting work is so compelling.

In many ways, The Master and Margarita provides a perfect platform for McBurney and Complicite. The fantastical novel merges myth, fact, reality and fantasy to the point of incomprehensibility, and no company is better equipped to transport that turmoil to the stage. Within the opening few minutes we are treated not only to a plethora of themes, but also to a visual extravaganza which is nothing short of spectacular. As such, deconstructing the plot is an almost impossible task. Suffice it to say that there are so few longeurs in this piece that the colossal 180 minute running time seems positively abrupt.

The success of the production lies in its unwavering commitment. True to form, Complicite throw everything including the kitchen sink into this adaptation. Video projection, puppetry, fruit, audience involvement, visual effects and comic book style graphics are all added to the mix; the ghosts of previous failures to bring this to the stage forever banished. The boldness of the scenes and the vigour and confidence of the acting accounts for most of the play’s power and we are transported by a string of expertly orchestrated set pieces from one surreal world to another. Moscow is very much a character in the play, and the scenes involving Margarita flying over the city are breathtakingly effective.

In concentrating so closely on getting the intricacies of the narrative perfect, McBurney has sacrificed some of the humour of the original novel, but there are plenty moments of comic relief, mostly involving Behemoth, the wild-eyed, foul-mouthed cat in Satan’s entourage. Attempts to modernise the play with references to iPads and Primark, and to localise it with comments such as “it’s a bit like Russell Square” in reference to a location in Moscow, never seem to dilute the narrative, but rather add some contemporary resonances which may otherwise have been overlooked.

John Hodge’s Collaborators, a blackly comic take on Mikhail Bulgakov’s last years, has just had its run extended at the National Theatre, and the two plays make interesting companion pieces. But while the one seeks to navigate inside the famed author’s mind, the other takes his most famous output and expands it in ways previously unimaginable. McBurney’s triumph is in seeing this most complex of novels as a foundation on which to build, rather than as a restrictive structure. The joy of the production lies in its ability to transcend its source material, and the result is the most fun you’ll have with a Russian dramatist all year.

The Master and Margarita is at the Barbican Theatre until 7 April.

'Angry' Sam Berkson. Photograph: Antonio Curcetti

Long a minority pursuit, poetry has recently grown hugely popular, particularly in its incarnation as a performing art.

Spoken word events have popped up lately in East London venues large and small – from the back rooms of pubs to major arts centres. Sam Berkson, AKA ‘Angry Sam’ is one of the leading figures in Hackney’s spoken word movement, running the Hackney Hammer and Tongue performance poetry night at the Victoria pub in Dalston.

The Hackney Citizen caught up with Angry Sam to discuss the evolution of the genre and his own place within it.

HC: How would you describe the spoken word scene in Hackney? How has it evolved in recent years and what makes it distinctive?

SB: I’ve been running live poetry events since 2005, and been going to them and performing at them since 2002, but I’ve moved around the country a bit and only lived in Hackney for the last few years so I can only compare this scene with what I’ve seen elsewhere, not with what it was like before.

Hackney is not the most accessible place to get to in London (although that’s changing a bit) but it’s a good place for establishing a local scene. A lot of people round here are interested in art of an underground, communal kind of vibe – and that’s where spoken word is right now – even if they’re coming at it from a number of different angles.

Spoken word nights round here attract a largely local but really diverse and engaged group of people and I think that’s what makes Hackney distinctive. Performance poetry is getting more attention these days but it’s still not very well known as entertainment, so it often shares the stage with other artforms – and generally that’s a good thing because you avoid pigeon holes and reach more people.

Lyrically Challenged at Passing Clouds starts with poetry and then merges into a hiphop night; The Bus Driver’s Prayer which has just started up at The Hackney Attic in the Picturehouse, puts on poetry and music, mainly singer-songwriters and acoustic stuff; Speech Motion at The Others and Akilah Live put on poetry with short films. It fits in with comedy too. Hammer and Tongue is entirely a poetry night, but that’s just the way that we run things. We always have a DJ in between the acts and quite a few of the poets we put on use music as backing for their poetry and are also MCs or stand up comics or singers.

HC: What is the best kind of venue for this type of event, and why does Hammer and Tongue work?

SB: It can work in a lot of different spaces, but it’s good to have a large enough venue with some comfortable chairs and not too much noise-bleed from elsewhere so people don’t have to stand up and you can build atmosphere. There’s nothing like the sound of 150 people sitting in silence, totally absorbed in the sound and the meaning of a poet’s words. It’s totally different from reading on your own.

Hammer and Tongue works cos we mix up the amateur with the professional and we try and keep it entertaining. Hopefully we’re good judges of poetry so we book the right people – the kind of people who you can put on in front of an audience who have never been to a poetry night before and they’ll completely change people’s minds about what poetry is and what it can do. Artists tend to enjoy working with us because we thoroughly respect what they do.

Then we run open mic ‘slam’ competitions so people can get on the same stage and enjoy the same reception that the pro poets have just had with people in the audience as their judges. The competition element makes it fun but it also does an important thing in that it makes ordinary people into the ‘stars’ and it asks ordinary people to express their opinion on poetry – you don’t have to be an academic you just have to know what you like.

HC: How did you get involved in spoken word and what attracts you to this genre?

SB: It’s a bit of cliché but I guess poetry found me. I’m a verbal person, I like words. I have always listened more to lyrics than to music. I started to write as a teenager mainly imitating what I heard in metal and rap and punk lyrics and from the few things that I read. When I came across Hammer and Tongue in 2002 which then was just a monthly event in a bar in East Oxford, before it expanded across the country, I was completely blown away by the way poets delivered their work and how much fun people had being part of a live audience, listening to poetry.

What attracts me is the possibility of dealing directly with language and meaning – so people can share ideas that are, hopefully, relevant to us all, that can unite people and challenge some of the notions that you get in mainstream media and politics. And because you’re performing it live, you get an instant response from a whole room full of people, and because you’re using sound and rhythm and imagery and not just lecturing people, it can be remembered and passed on and developed.

HC: How would you characterise your own work? What are you trying to achieve?

I try to write about topics that matter to us right now or are honest about myself and my own experiences in a way that uses comedy but isn’t only comical, that entertains but it isn’t only entertainment. I want to make things that resonate with as many people as possible, with their sound and with their meaning.

HC: You call yourself ‘Angry Sam’ – why have you chosen this particular moniker?

SB: “The foundations of tyranny are firm and cannot be plucked up without the anger of the larger part of the multitude.” – Baruch Spinoza, 1670

On Saturday 31 March the Hammer and Tongue UK Slam final will be held. The event includes winners from regional slams across the country and inter-city team slams. It will be held at Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley E1 8JB. Team slams from 1pm; Solo UK competition from 7pm. Tickets available at wiltons.org.uk. The 3 April Hammer and Tongue at the Victoria features Chris Redmond ‘Ventriloquist’ and open mic slam.

Hammer and Tongue Hackney
Performance Poetry and Spoken Word
First Tuesday of every month
The Victoria
451 Queensbridge Road E8 3AS
Info: samberkson@gmail.com

Exploring themes from crime to unemployment, from blame to education, the plays touch on many of the facets of life that the financial crisis has impacted upon, right across society.

All the shorts were afforded equal weighting in terms of time and billing, but, much like the Roman emperors, some are more equal than others. First among these equals was the They May Not Mean To, But They Do.

The play, a short skit based around one jobless art student’s imaginary trial of her mother for failing to push her to learn some practical skills that would get her a job. Sammy Kissin, Fiona Skinner and Kellie Jane Walters were all superb as the crazed student and the two characters she’s bought to life in the head, her doll, leading the mother’s defence, and her dog, ostensibly prosecuting but actually more concerned with scratching his balls and eating cheese.

As strange as that may seem, it made perfect sense, and served as a reminder that, in spite of external influences, each of us is partly responsible for the situation we find ourselves in.

None of the plays were over 20 minutes long, they were all completely digestible. The whole experience was akin to a light dinner, leaving you pleasantly full, not gorged and lethargic at the end. For those of you, like me, who struggle to go more than half an hour without checking your messages or emails, this is actually the perfect way to see theatre.

The Lion itself is a wonderful pub to have a theatre above. The space is large enough to allow all the audience members to sit in relative comfort, and its layout means it lends itself very easily to the two-room staging of most of the shorts.

The room has windows in, which were utilised to full effect by the players. If you happened to have walked past the Lion and been called a ‘Little shit’ or been struck by a rogue flying digestive fear not, it’s all in the name of art.

Behind Closed Doors
The Lion
132 Church Street N16 0JX
Tues 13 and Wed 14 March

Performances start at 7.45pm>
Tickets £6.
Bookings: 07428 052226   

Lovers: Lydia Wilson (Annabella) and Jack Gordon (Giovanni). Photograph: Manuel Harlan

Over the last 30 years, Cheek by Jowl has established itself as the paragon of innovation in international theatre. Formed in 1981, the company’s mission has been to reinvigorate the classical dramatic canon, making the gems of yesteryear more accessible to modern theatregoers. It was only a matter of time before they came to tackle one of the most consistently controversial and provocative works in the theatrical repertoire: John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

Adapting this iconic Jacobean revenge tragedy for the modern stage presents certain difficulties. For a start, the play revolves around a fully consummated incestuous relationship, not such a rarity on the 17th century stage, but still as much of a taboo today as it was 400 years ago. Furthermore, a strong sense of religious guilt permeates the drama, which can feel rather contrived to a contemporary audience. Previous productions have seemed laboured and overly austere, but this electric staging allays any such fears within the opening few minutes, as we are treated to a boisterous pop dance sequence involving the ensemble cast, including the robed friar. This is repeated at various intervals throughout the evening, against the backdrop of Annabella’s bedroom, which is decorated with posters of recent vampire-related movie and TV franchises.

But this production offers more than mere visual spectacle. By updating the setting to modern day Italy, it succeeds in shifting the focus away from the hypocrisies of the Vatican and on to the corruption of the society surrounding the doomed lovers. There is almost a religious purity to Giovanni and his sister’s passion, which sharply contrasts with the insincerity of the surrounding characters who are so outraged by their behaviour. The demonic force in this play is not religion; it is the decadence of a community whose values, when scrutinised, are found to be diseased. Consequently, the famously violent and gory scenes never seem gratuitous. They are acts of desperation in a world which is caving in on itself.

Cheek by Jowl has a reputation for getting the most out of its acting talent, and this cast is no exception. The performances are universally impressive, while lead actors Lydia Wilson (Annabella) and Jack Gordon (Giovanni) are particularly outstanding, as they manage to convince us of the sincerity of their love in a natural, organic manner. Laurence Spellman provides a darkly comic turn as the scheming servant Vasques, and Suzanne Burden invokes unexpected sympathy as the promiscuous widow Hippolita. Declan Donnellan’s direction is politely creative, and serves to enhance Ford’s text, rather than detract from it. The decision to stage the play within one setting and without an interval also pays dividends, increasing the intensity and compounding the sense of claustrophobia.

Risks were taken in this brave production, including a slight alteration to the ending of the play, but the result is a landmark adaptation of this troublesome tale, which besides for being compelling and believable, is also far less dull.

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore is at the Barbican’s Silk Street Theatre until 10 March.

Robin Crouch, who plays Sam Hallam, with Sam's mother Wendy Cohen and actor Debra Baker. Photograph: Josh Loeb

Anyone who has experienced any aspect of the criminal justice system will testify that it is hard.

Courtrooms leave you feeling calloused and trials wear you down, and even those prisons said to be the ‘nicer’ ones seem to tear at the soul.

What is also obvious to anyone who has had dealings with this system is that, despite the vital role it plays in our society, it is imperfect and grossly under resourced.

Miscarriages of justice happen, but the fight to clear one’s name is a mammoth task.

For the past seven years it is a battle that has been fought by Sam Hallam, the Hackney man who was tried and convicted of murder aged 17, and his family and supporters from his area of Hoxton.

The battle has taken its toll, but there has slowly been progress.

In May an appeal will be heard in the High Court that could lead to Sam’s conviction being quashed.

The former kitchen fitter, now officially known as Prisoner MW5897, was found guilty following a terrible and lethal attack by a gang of youths on Ethiopian refugee and trainee chef Essayas Kassahun.

There was no CCTV or forensic evidence linking Sam to the crime, and he was convicted solely on the basis of shaky evidence provided by two eyewitnesses; one retracted his accusation in court, the other said that when she accused Sam she had been looking for “someone to blame”.

Sam has said he will never admit to a crime he maintains he did not commit, even though doing so might increase his chance of being eligible for parole.

That, in summary, is the story. A mind-boggling number of words have been written about it in newspapers, and TV programmes have been made. Now this ‘verbatim’ play, based on documentary evidence, has been produced.

Theatre can be a more powerful medium than the two mentioned above, and it is bold to make a journalistic play out of a ‘live’ story like Sam’s.

Brave too are the prisoner’s family, some of whom were in the audience for the show’s first night.

It must have been a strange experience for Sam’s mum Wendy to see herself played by actor Debra Baker.

Having met some of the characters in real life, I can confirm that, whether due to inspired casting, great acting or both, the likenesses are uncanny.

Murder trials, if nothing else, make for good theatre, and with its tense court scenes and well conveyed dialogue, Someone To Blame is engaging even to those wearily familiar with the events it depicts – a testament to the skill of playwright Tess Berry-Hart.

Knockout performances were given by ensemble actor Vincent Jerome and Robin Crouch, who plays Sam.

Graffiti and cold prison walls comprise the set, which complements the mood, and the work teases out broader themes about wrongs done by rumours, failings at the heart of big authorities and the helplessness of those at the mercy of the legal process but without the connections that can be called upon by wealthier defendants.

When I met Sam Hallam in HMP Bullingdon in 2009, four years after he was jailed for life, he still seemed stunned by what had befallen him. “The system’s rubbish,” he said when I asked how he explained it.

This cracking and well produced play will help keep his case in the public consciousness in a way that yet another newspaper article cannot. Highly recommended.

Someone To Blame runs at the King’s Head Theatre in Upper Street, Islington N1, until Saturday 31 March. For tickets call 020 7478 0160.

Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Cosmo Disney) in The Pitchfork Disney. Photograph: Scott Rylander

Twenty-one years since its first performance and Philip Ridley’s gloriously disturbing début still pulls no punches. This revival production, directed by Edward Dick, is slickly staged and impeccably performed, a shocking mix of deranged fantasy and psychological realism with Ridley’s brilliantly bilious dialogue simultaneously repelling while leaving you wanting more.

Agoraphobic twins Haley and Presley are traumatised by the unexplained disappearance of their parents. Although adults, they live together in a state of perennial childhood, subsisting mainly on chocolate, deeply fearful of anything outside the grim-looking,cockroach-infested confines of what was once their family home.

In a set that’s half crack den half 1950s semi, the siblings find comfort in telling sinister stories of post-apocalyptic worlds, recalling nightmares featuring crucifixes and rabid dogs. But Presley’s repressed sexual desires lead to the violation of their enclosed living space by the chance visit of two strangers: showman Cosmo Disney, played with thrilling poise by Misfits star Nathan Stewart-Jarrett; and his lumbering henchman of a companion, Pitchfork Cavalier (Steve Guadino).

Chris New excels in the role of Presley, a character who veers from a sense of  inadequacy, getting satisfaction when Cosmo calls him by his name, to committing acts of violence, and whose bizarre fantasies are darkly comedic and disturbing. “You need a good scrub,” Cosmo tells cardigan-clad Presley, whose homosexuality is the white elephant in the room, perhaps the true cause of his self-exclusion from the outside world.

He longs to be touched by Cosmo, who dazzles in a red spangly tux and braces over his naked torso. Whether his relationship with Haley (Mariah Gale) is incestuous we’re left to surmise, but there are certainly hints of it when he administers a tranquiliser to her on a child’s dummy and orders her to ‘suck’. It’s one of a number of unresolved and apparently contradictory issues left, enticingly, in the air.

When Cosmo, who earns a living eating live insects, convinces Presley to munch on a cockroach, his comment that, “The queasier it gets, the more they pay” could cynically be applied to the play, but Edward Dick’s sensitive and brilliantly executed production proves that the issues it raises, particularly about exclusion and homosexuality, are as relevant now as they were two decades ago.

The Pitchfork Disney
Until 17 March
Arcola Theatre
24 Ashwin Street
Dalston
E8 3DL
020 7503 1646

Terrible: Tudors Henry and Anne. Photograph: Ian Tilton

For decades Terry Deary has been delighting children with his gut-wrenching renditions of historical periods and events. Now his creations are set to burst onto stage at the Hackney Empire with cutting edge 3D special effects to illustrate the horrors of two of Deary’s most cherished tales: Vile Victorians and Terrible Tudors.

The Horrible Histories are perhaps best known as books, though they have since been incarnated into TV series, CDs, and for several years, theatrical productions.

In moving his lively dramas to the stage, Deary is in fact coming back to the origins of the project. The author started out as an actor and playwright, and the Horrible Histories have their origins in plays he wrote on historical themes.

Though it is through his 241 books that he rose to fame, he says that theatre retains distinct attractions: “A visual memory is often stronger than a literary memory. You look at something on stage and you never forget it.”

Several decades on from his thespian beginnings, Deary’s theatrical creations have gone high-tech. “Children are very comfortable with computer graphics these days,” he says.

“In the first act you see a computer-generated background. In the second act it becomes three-dimensional. When you see the Tame Bridge disaster, you see it crumble, and when the train comes off the end of the bridge, it ends up in your lap.”

There is a logic behind this gruesome and sometimes graphic approach to figuring the past: “History is rather boring the way it is taught in schools,” Deary says.

“What I write about are human experiences. This includes stories which are quite horrific. But people committed these dreadful acts or suffered. They were either the victims of the executors, as it were.”

And he takes inspiration from newsprint: “Newspapers don’t public lists of dates like history books do,” he says.

“Newspapers publish stories about real human beings. And that’s what I think I do in the Horrible Histories. That is education, not learning facts and the dry stuff. I think newspapers are far more relevant for children than school textbooks.”

Horrible Histories: Vile Victorians and Terrible Tudors
21-25 March 2012
Hackney Empire
291 Mare Street E8 1EJ
Tel: 020 8985 2424