In search of creative stimulation I skipped along not once but twice the other week to what can only be described as a magical underground labyrinth of caves. Otherwise known as The Vaults, under Waterloo, a central London (Uk) train station, to embrace my first play of the year.
Walking off the main thoroughfare of a cold, dark February evenings busy London high street with all the sirens, tooting car horns, shouts and general busyness of the main arena, I submerged myself down a flight of damp stone steps. Confronted with a Batman esq style, legally graffiti adorned walled, characterful creative heaven, home to several 'moody' caves, each one playing a different play as part of the Vault Festival 2014. It did not escape me this underground world was indeed a beating heart of the arts. Friendly, enticing, stimulating, frankly, a home from home full of like-minded souls with a passion for creating worlds with words.
I entered the cave my ticket told me to go into almost as if I had stepped back in time to a modern day Dickensian London. Anyone seen old Bill Sykes?
Reviewing the situation:
Originally composed several years ago, amidst a tumultuous social climate here in the Uk, Nazish Kahn's Pole Factor, the play I was here to see, is located in a fittingly 'alternative' ambience deep within these caves. Adorned with a tapestry of green, brown and yellow cloths draped nonchalantly across the back of the stage creating a mood one may assume is that found within a Bedouin tent out in a desert. Reenha Lalbihari as the alluringly feline-like Coco, would indeed look perfectly at home in such a tent as her physical skill and deftly timed alluring romance with the pole suggested. Or a circus trapeze artist. A low rumble of trains overhead added to the everyday struggling Londoner atmosphere. Set in a living room with minimal props save of course for a battered old sofa and a towering silver pole, Pole Factor is a shattering social commentary on the struggles facing people of Islamic faith here in the Uk. Juxtaposed with our 'celebrity' 'Talent show' driven, some may say obsessed culture. I write nothing of the plethora of 'reality' television shows.I write nothing of the plethora of 'reality' television shows. In jovial humour.These two themes transposed against each other allowed the audience to resonate with this play. At least I did. We have all I imagine, at least heard of the X-Factor if indeed we have not seen it. And we have all at least caught a fleeting glimpse of the news, or a newspaper, over the last eight years or so, enough to realise racial tensions have been a recurring news piece.
Played from the perspectives of Hanif, a young Islamic faith Londoner constantly berated and misunderstood over his desire to set up a mosque football team. The football team, to my understanding is a beautifully empowering metaphor for unity. Coco with her desire to become famous through the talent show. And Max, the archetypical stereotyped controlling boyfriend constantly struggling to be taken seriously. All tempered by fellow contestant on Pole Factor, Gina. Balancing the dramatic tensions Gina herself is engaged with whilst adding a welcomed whimsical yet always engagingly played comic aside. Actress Fiona McGee creates a heart-warming multi-faceted character . It was a stimulating educational experience for me, telling the otherwise largely untold plight of people with Islamic faith here in the Uk, so often side-lined by mainstream commentaries.
The physicality of the characters played with consummate timing by Fiona McGee and Farhan Kahn specifically, drew me in to the at times subtle comedic undertones of what is otherwise a hard hitting, tense piece of social narrative drama mixed with doses of physical theatre. Its that circus again. There was, I noticed on my second visit to embrace Pole Factor, one audience member who spent the entire second half with his jaw dropped to the floor. The peripeteia moment comes as Coco is pushed savagely to the sofa of this would-be living room. Complemented with real life rumbles from a passing train her boyfriend Max, a lapsed Islam faith young man played eerily accurately by Ian Baksh, violently spreads her legs adopting a position we are all familiar with. Tense moments such as this, coupled with Coco's entrapment within the would-be living room served to justifiably shock this audience as we caught a glimpse of terrors facing some women in our society. The moodily atmospheric location of this cave did wonders for juxtaposing the false-realities of 'Celebrity culture,' whilst simultaneously becoming a power house of accurate dramatic social commentary. The have-nots' striving to become the have's via the talent show Pole Factor.
Nazish Kahn writes with an intimately engaged ear to our multi-faceted society. She composes a multi- layered commentary on THE KEY ISSUES of today we can all resonate with, whilst imparting the intensive pin-drop moments a subject matter such as this deserves. Allowing the audience to be pulled along with the characters individual and joint onwards struggles as the story unfolds with moments, within this rumbling engine, of subtle humour. Kahn plainly has the wider social picture firmly in mind.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2014, fasten your seat-belts. Again!
Until we meet again through the page, I trust this finds you in good health and a happiness
Peace Friends X
