Champion sound

by Amar Patel in ,


Let’s acknowledge this up front. I can’t think of another TV series that looks or sounds like Champion. You might hear someone kickin’ a 16 on Top Boy. Feel the instant island warmth of likkle patois in the dialogue of a Small Axe special. Or find Mood and appreciate how financial insecurity and fear of failure are tightly bound up for aspiring musicians, and how race and gender influence their chances of success.

But to take us into the heart of Lewisham borough (my home) and examine sibling rivalry in the music business through the lens of a fragmented British Caribbean family feels fresh, immersive and long overdue.

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Amar Patel

Crash and burn

by Amar Patel in ,


Covering three generations of family history over 164 years, The Lehman Trilogy is an epic story of vaulting ambition and mounting greed that’s conquered theatres from the Southbank to Broadway since premiering in 2018.

I had heard great things about Es Devlin’s stage design, in particular – pairing a rotating, open-office construction (all glass panels, filing boxes and little else) with a panoramic Luke Halls video projection of skylines and more behind. So I picked up a reasonably priced ticket for the current run at the Gillian Lynne Theatre.

Most of us are familiar with Lehman Brothers, once the fourth biggest bank in the US and whose collapse was integral to the 2008 financial crash. I wanted to know how we got there, and indeed how the Lehmans came to New York from Bavaria via the plantations of Alabama. So if you too are up for a dynamic history lesson with a side order of sibling rivalry then get yourself down there before June … and buckle up.

Clocking in at more than three hours, the production features a three-man cast of Nigel Lindsay (Broken Glass, The Pillowman, Four Lions), Michael Balogun (Macbeth, Barbershop Chronicles, Blue/Orange) and Hadley Fraser (Les Misérables, City of Angels, The Deep Blue Sea) who excel at playing umpteen characters in the most chameleonic and rapid-fire fashion, from stubborn or combative board types to flirtatious dames and petulant children.

Following the company’s evolution as traders in fabrics, raw cotton, coffee, cash then stocks and shares feels logical and astonishing at the same time. (We should probably add human beings to that list, says Professor Sarah Churchwell, though the play is rather silent on the matter.) The family managed, in different ways, to fulfil, flog and repackage the American Dream. One that had a familiar gleam, a sure thing-ness and insatiability about it every time.

Looking into their crystal ball, they said you too can make it, trust me, but act now or miss out. Lehman gets rich in the process and as a result, they only want to get richer while the get-rich philosophy in a capitalist society brings more fresh fish to the trawler. But there’s only one problem as Lindsay points out while in narrator mode: “What happens if they stop believing?”

Sam Mendes’ direction instills poise at certain moments and frenzy at others. I like the use of magic marker scrawlings on the glass panels to signify the changing name and focus of the company, minimising the need for too many props or complex set changes, which would break the momentum. However, more pauses to catch our breathe would have been welcomed. ⁣Make no mistake, this production is relentless and always moving.

The pianist accompanying the actors with Nick Powell’s score, Erika Gundesen, was delightful and even partook in a little comedy where the story touches on one of the brothers’ efforts to learn the instrument in a very plodding manner. It’s a rights of passage, right. Together with the sound design elements, Powell’s score manages to both evoke the world of period drama and convey that sense of dark clouds overhead. There is a foreboding in the air.

I had a fidgety, flustered woman beside me who kept complaining about all the exposition in the script, questioning the importance of relaying events in such a play-by-play manner. Clearly, she didn’t know what she was getting into. ⁣Check the running time. “Epic” is unofficially in the title.

That said, playwright Ben Power’s adaptation of the Stefano Massini novel could do with an edit. At times, it felt more like listening to an in-depth podcast series than watching a play. On the flip side, the lengthy duration will give you more opportunities to marvel at the actors – their energy, endurance and elasticity. And how the stage, the “fourth dancer” as Devlin calls it, is constructed in a minimalist way to let them shine in each of their many roles from different perspectives.

Tickets (closes 20 May)



Amar Patel

Goldfish Bowl – new play, new feel

by Amar Patel in


How accessible is theatre in 2018, particularly to young people in poorer parts of the UK? The West End premium is still a problem and there are never enough offers like this to go around. Meanwhile, the Tate has decided to open all art exhibitions to 16-25s for just £5, a strategy that other major venues should follow.

It’s hard to imagine under-18s in the UK spending what little pocket change they have on a ticket to a new play when they can find what they like online, usually for little or nothing. But this issue goes deeper than cost.

It’s a two-part problem: content and delivery. We need more commissioned voices out there that can directly and very candidly speak of the times we are living in, using (and often subverting) the language and imagery of those times. This is particularly so for those from minority backgrounds. Never underestimate the power of seeing and hearing yourself on stage/screen.

Talawa has been a vital conduit in that regard, and there are occasional breakthroughs like the phenomenally successful Barbershop Chronicles, the vision of Inua Ellams and the product of years of persistent hustle. But these examples stand out because there are so few like them.

Which brings me to Goldfish Bowl, currently running at Battersea Arts Centre for the bargain price of around £10. This is a Paper Birds production starring former Young People’s Laureate Caleb Femi and featuring fellow Sxwks collective member Lex Amor together with the signature visuals of Olivia Twist.

It has been a work in progress for more than two years now, with previous performances happening at the Roundhouse and the Albany. Not many theatre companies would nurture a production with this much patience and love. Here’s a little taste.

I have met Femi a few times while working on this and this for social enterprise Soul Labels. He has been exploring his heritage for several years and pondering what it means to be British through work such as Children of the Narm and this Heathrow installation.

But I didn’t know how much trauma he had experienced between the early years in Nigeria and growing up on a north Peckham estate. Those “dark forces” at play. The car accidents, the fights, the gang violence… Last night he described Goldfish Bowl as his origin story – not how he became a superhero but how he became an English teacher. Is there a difference?  

That small theatre was like a portal for the audience. Harnessing very minimal yet evocative set design – a dangling mic, a telephone, a heart monitor made of strip lighting, a cracked mirror backdrop, a hospital gown and a copy of Frankenstein – Femi eased his way into the story through a serious of seemingly off-the-cuff conversations with Amor. It was like two mates ribbing each other in the pub; so playful, in fact, that we were almost blindsided by some of the darker moments to come.

Goldfish Bowl is a whirl, constantly shifting its focal point, tone and topic. The structure was fragmented and the energy off-kilter, which kept you on alert. One moment Femi would be playing schoolyard games and trawling 90’s pop culture with Amor, the next they would be trading bars over a grime beat, or simulating a classroom situation while addressing the audience.

Femi’s transition from conversation to spoken word performance was subtle and moving, particularly when paired with Twist’s animated etchings of the faces and places of his youth. He would turn tender memories of past loves and lost friends into poignant verse, then offer incisive commentary on topics such as the education system and life in Britain as the child of immigrants. This freeform, freestyle approach felt like the only way to tell his nuanced tale – more visceral than film, for intimate than radio. In the open.

In the context of current headlines – the escalation in knife crime, drill music and the demonisation of young black menGoldfish Bowl resonates even more deeply. But rather than dwell on these issues, which often come to define how others view a whole demographic, this play serves as a reminder that how you respond to certain experiences is more important than the experiences themselves in determining who you become.

Femi was shot aged just 17, something he has described as “a random altercation" and "being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person". Speaking to the Independent, he reframed the discussion on gang violence: “You have a group of friends – they’re just friends, your friends. You stick with them. And the more you stick with them, the more you’re associated with your friends. You grow up not really knowing you’re ‘a gang’ – not in the way it’s usually portrayed. If someone troubles your friend, if someone stabs your friend, you’re going to get involved. It happens like that. And before you know it, you’re swept away.” 

That day was his wake-up call. As he sits in the hospital bed holding Frankenstein in both hands, like a prayer book offering salvation, he asks, “What is a poem?”  In that moment, we understand the power of literature as a means of self-realisation, and the potential of the writer as not only a mythologist but a maker of meaning.

You may not have been born to Nigeria, called Peckham your “endz”, smelt so much of home in a head of hair, made your own entertainment on a council estate, lost “fam” or stared death in the face. But you will recognise what it feels like to stumble, to find your place and maybe, just maybe, to have a dream.     

Goldfish Bowl takes you there, as great art should. It’s universal, like a heart that beats for life. And definatly so.

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Goldfish Bowl is running at Battersea Arts Centre until 16 June.



Amar Patel