Richard Cameron’s theatrical territory is south Yorkshire and it’s yielded a fine crop of plays, of which The Glee Club remains a personal favourite. Now Cameron is back on home soil with a play that records fractured lives in a former pit village with a painful honesty, and which is well directed by Mike Bradwell.
Cameron’s focus is on Delie, who spearheads the Flannelettes, a Motown tribute band, and who has lately won a civic trophy for her conscientious litter-clearing. But when Delie comes to stay with her auntie Brenda at the latter’s refuge for abused women, we realise all is not what it seems. Delie, described by her aunt as “22 going on 12”, falls prey to the local culture of ruthless sexual exploitation. Like her friend Roma, Delie dreams of a better world, but has small hope of achieving it in a ravaged community fuelled by drugs, torn by violence and dominated by men who are at worst cruel and at best ineffectual.
I wish Cameron had made it clearer whether he felt economic decline was the cause of the community’s brutality or simply that brutality’s context. But the play gives a chilling portrait of the tragic decline of South Yorkshire’s mining towns and villages. The social bleakness is offset by the use of 60s pop hits, which vibrate with romantic optimism, and by a string of strong performances. Emma Hook touchingly endows the victimised Delie with a natural resilience, Suzan Sylvester captures her aunt’s tough-minded independence and Geoff Leesley, as the local pawnbroker, who dons a dress to appear as a back-up singer with Delie’s group, neatly hints at the impotence of the well-intentioned in an oppressively chauvinist society.
• At King’s Head, London, until 6 June. Box office: 020-7193 7845.
