Lee Mattinson
Theatre by the Lake production
Theatre by the Lake, Keswick
October 3-19, 2024: 1 hr 25 mins, no interval
(Also at The Centre, Maryport, October 23; The Beggars Theatre, Millom, October
24; Florence Arts Centre, Egremont, October 25; Carlisle Youth Zone, October 30,
and Carnegie Theatre and Arts Centre, Workington, November 2-3)
For a play whose primary prop is a large digital clock at the back of the stage, the timing chimes well. Steel, set in West Cumbrian Workington, is partly about the death of the local steel industry, and with news of closure of the UK's last open-cast coal mine – following the final bullet for neighbouring Whitehaven’s planned mine – the fossil-fuel clock is ticking louder by the year.
The production is the headline act of Theatre by the Lake's new writing festival, CumbriaFest, which focuses on Cumbrian artists and young people. Steel runs in the theatre’s surprisingly intimate studio, where you can’t help but feel vaguely between the legs of the person behind you. The set is satisfyingly sparse – a kind of chalk-drawn furniture beneath the clock, which is crucial for signposting the countless finger-snap scene changes in this well-written, 90-minute, 12-hour misadventure.
Two mates, shell-suited working-class white James (Jordan Tweddle) and British Asian Kamran (Suraj Shah), are itching for a golden ticket out of Workington’s no-work ghost town. When James discovers he has inherited a mile of the British railway system, he stands to gain £1 million – if only he can track down the original paperwork proving his inheritance. Far-fetched, but good material for onstage action.
Steel has another story within, however, about hidden homosexuality and its secret battle with the forces of (particularly) male bigotry in a community forging its post-industrial present out of its fading past.
Apart from dubious attempts at Cumbrian accents and too nervously comic a start for such a layered and thought-provoking play, the acting is impressive. Few things please better than real, visible emotion (however well-faked), and Jordan Tweddle's tear-wet face as the pathos builds is striking.
Suraj Shah is amazingly versatile in his performance, not only of Kamran but of countless other characters, including James’s dad, his own mother and a drag queen.
Writer Lee Mattinson’s acerbic script is full of great lines – middle-class Workington is described as “drinking pints of mushroom risotto”; some dodgy alcoholic drink tastes like “fizzy petrol”, and at one point James declares “I hate the Lake District. Beatrix Potter can go fuck himself”.
Liz Stevenson’s directing provides a nice, fast heartbeat, and the lighting (Jessie Addinall) and sound (Mark Melville) are spot-on, projecting the seductive seediness of low-lit nocturnalities.
But with perhaps too many elements, and only two actors – literally rushed off their feet at times thanks to Kieran Sheehan’s brilliant movement direction – Steel is in the end a little too heavily wrought into its final shape by its admirable main message – that to forge better communities we need to remove the impurities of homophobia and racism lurking behind our own front doors, in our workplaces, and on our pub and club floors.
More info and tickets here
