Joseph Kloska, Roger Evans, Kirsty Stuart and Craig Kelly in Fast Labour
HIS story is familiar to the English-working class, says playwright Steve Waters, who suggests the lot of the rural worker has never been fun.
In his acerbic new play, a political but not polemical piece, those workers are economic migrants from Eastern Europe: all the more topical after this week's revelation that half of our imported cheap labour has returned east already.
Waters sticks to posing questions, reasoning that if he were to assume he knew the answers, his play would be insufferable.
Fast Labour is not insufferable but promises more in the first half than it delivers in the maladroit second. Its strongest hand is its comedic lambasting of British hypocrisy, whereas the rise and fall of Ukrainian entrepreneur Victor (Craig Kelly), the rushed finale and the play's circular structure seem pre-ordained to chime with his judgement on rural work.
Victor arrives at a Glasgow fish-filleting factory with no legal papers and only two English words: "Want Work". Like dim Moldovan-Russian henchman (Roger Evans) and duplicitous Lithuanian Andrius (Joseph Kloska), he is taken on by smug, unctuous East Anglian gangmaster Grimmer (Mark Jax), on the nod of bonny but morally ambivalent Scottish recruitment officer Anita (Kirsty Stuart in her impressive professional debut).
Whisked off to the Fenland plains - one of several journeys or rail and road locations on Simon Daw and Mic Pool's video projections that provide a visual commentary on our not so green and pleasant land - Victor already has Anita in his pocket and his bed.
advertisement
In the depths of Britain's black economy, he embraces two new words: Fast Labour, his play-them-at-their-own-game employment agency that dupes Grimmer with his own illegal human trafficking.
A soundtrack of Victor's favourite band, Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song et al - peps up scene changes in Ian Brown's measured production, while Waters' device of having the three Eastern Europeans switch from broken to fluent English in regional accents when speaking in their own tongue facilitates digs at British characteristics.
Waters' focus falls on the effect on people rather than the rotten system itself, but the impact of the arrival of Victor's wife, Tanya (Charlotte Lucas) and a catastrophic fire are botched, one missing a showdown, the other devoid of tragedy or shock. Fast Labour is well performed, directed and designed but lacks the singular conviction of David Hare's political works.
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
Print
Email this
Comment
