Parliament Square (Bush Theatre)
I was disappointed by this, but I think I am partly guilty; I had somehow convinced myself that it was going to be electrifying. Thinking back, I know what influenced my pre-impressions, but I know I should know better than to fall for them.
Parliament Square won the Judges’ Prize in the last round of the Bruntwood Prize, two years ago. I know people who had read the play, and having seen it, I know why they were raving about its currency: James Fritz is a fantastic playwright, and he’s written a blistering play — fraught and frustrated and angry at the world. But in the Bush this week, it just felt like I was watching a load of people playing pretend.
Listen to this story though, and tell me it doesn’t sound like a fucking fantastic play. A woman, Kat — in an apparently happy relationship, gainfully employed, and with a young child — gets on a train to London in order to protest in Parliament Square. She wasn’t joining some kind of organised march or anything; she was just going to set fire to herself, like one of those Tibetan monks, because of ‘everything that is wrong with the world’. (Amazing, right?) She’s saved though — someone puts her out — and she faces a long, painful recovery. As her family close ranks to protect her, she realises that nobody even knows why she did what she did, so any potential political impact has been completely negated.
She gets better, her body heals, her daughter grows up, and the family move to a ‘nicer area’. But the girl that saved her on Parliament Square that day is haunted by what happened. As she thinks about what might have been if she hadn’t stepped in, she goes from feeling like a hero to feeling like she big time fucked up. And so, in the final moments of the play, it is she who travels to Parliament Square to set fire to herself, and it is she who gives her life to the act of protest.
I mean, just writing it down makes it sound awesome, right? What a play. And it is, really. James Fritz is so great at story and concept, and in both this and a thing I saw him do for Old Vic New Voices a few years ago, he shows what you can do with a montage of dialogue — like cinematic quick editing, but for the voices onstage. It is this technique that carries the middle part of the play, during Kat’s long recovery and the years that follow, and it is properly brilliant. It just can’t make up for the three fairly major crapnesses that populate the rest of it.
The first is all the Acting they are doing. Like, all the time. Crying and wailing and shit. It feels almost Greek. And it smothers the anger that would otherwise live completely within that story. I found myself wincing and rolling my eyes, wishing that they’d just let the quiet fury build up gently. Instead, it was like they were vying for some kind of catharsis award. I hope some mega-dry Germans get hold of this one day and Brecht the fuck out of it.
The second is the confetti drop. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a confetti drop. More glitter and tinsel please. But for a moment of protest as shocking and visceral as this to be met with orange sparkles just felt like it cheapened the whole thing. Interestingly, during the first ‘failed’ attempt there was no confetti — only falling ash. That’s my jam here. Ash and blood and righteous fury. The confetti was such a deflation. I should have felt it searing through my veins; instead it was just a bit silly.
The final thing is the character of Catherine, the woman who saved Kat and then completed the protest at the end. (Oh look, their names are basically the same — hadn’t noticed that at the time.) By far the most interesting person on stage, who performed a tremendous feat of bravery and humanity without thinking, then tapped Kat’s mother for £200 to replace her burnt up jacket, only to be told she fucked up A Great Political Moment. We barely saw her life between that moment and her reappearance at the very end. What an emotional fucking journey that must’ve been… Even without interrogating the fact that Kat is white and middle class and Catherine is young and black and, it is implied, less well off. Of course, Fritz is showing us something interesting there — a black woman who ran fearlessly into danger and a white woman who stood back and let someone else die in her place — but still, statements like that are of limited value when we only get to see one woman’s story.
