Ten years ago, Cressida Brown and Offstage Theatre made a verbatim show with the residents of the Beaumont estate in Leyton, a place notorious for its drug problems and gang violence. It was performed in one of the estate’s three tower blocks, which were demolished shortly after, scattering the residents across east London and Essex.
Of the 4,490 original residents, only 234 remain on the new low-rise estate, and Brown has returned to track down some of the people she originally interviewed and filmed. Several of those original films are recreated by a quartet of strong performers who play young and old, in particular capturing the explosive, giddy spirits of a chaotic group of pre-teens. It’s on this group that Brown largely focuses.
It’s a labour of love, and one that is fitfully insightful as it considers the meaning of home. It’s moving, too, as we find out what happened to some of those kids. But until its final minutes it lacks focus and, apart from a final section in which a youngster talks about the etiquette of visiting fast food outlets in parts of east London, it doesn’t really capture the texture of people’s daily lives, or the changes wreaked by the Olympics and creeping gentrification.
It feels most interesting as a demonstration of the ethics of verbatim theatre, and what happens when middle class theatre-makers parachute into other people’s lives, asking questions in cut-glass vowels. The original was about the people of Beaumont and took place in their community. This revisiting is more problematic: subsidised tickets are available for Beaumont residents but there’s something uncomfortable about presenting it in one of London’s coolest theatres, where we can peep into other people’s lives before returning to the safety of our own. You sense that Brown knows this, and maybe that’s the point: you can’t make or stage a show in the community if the community no longer exists.
- At the Yard, London, to 5 March.
