Edinburgh Fringe 2024
Barracking
University of York Drama Society
Genre: Comedy, Political, Theatre
Venue: theSpace @ Surgeons' Hall
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Three students win places in the prestigious debating team at an unnamed, but obviously elite tertiary education establishment. One has hauled themselves up by their bootlaces, two born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth. Eliza Brown’s new play trenchantly highlights the fabled one percenters, the wealthy elite that is an invitation only club – without exception.
Review
Barracking – to jeer loudly at someone performing or speaking in public in order to express disapproval or to distract them. That’s a classic dictionary definition of the term and provides a neat summary of the action (and words) that unfolded in Eliza Brown’s eponymous new play which trenchantly highlights the fabled one percenters, the wealthy elite that is an invitation only club – without exception.
Three students win places in the prestigious debating team at an unnamed, but obviously elite tertiary education establishment. One has hauled themselves up by their bootlaces, battling through our stuttering comprehensive system and an impoverished upbringing in a decidedly unfashionable part of the North-East. Two were born not so much with silver spoons in their respective mouths as a full set of glittering cutlery, such is their obvious disdain for anything requiring effort and their overwhelming sense of entitlement.
So it is that we follow the progress of Greta, Robbie and Andrew, winning, somewhat against the odds, successive rounds of debates due largely to the unstinting efforts of Greta (our bootlace hauling heroine), who sees success here as her way of cracking the elitist code and gaining entry to the club. But Andrew has other ideas.
This fifty minute piece gets its message across in less than fifty seconds and spends the remaining time reinforcing it through a series of extended allegories highlighting the alarming inequality and prejudice still present in parts of the UK in the 21st century. OK, England. OK, OK, that elitist southern bit concentrated around London and Oxbridge.
Subtle it ain’t, but then maybe it wasn’t supposed to be. Maybe, after umpteen years of the elite feathering their own nests at the expense of those unable or incapable of being admitted to the club, it’s time to chuck out subtlety and go for the sledgehammer to crack a few nuts.
The acting gets things across quite capably. Isobel Lloyd-Paine appears suitably earnest and determined as Greta and Fraser Houston plays Robbie with an appropriate sense of entitlement, But Brown’s script has a nice twist towards the end, allowing both characters to reveal hidden depths and emotions.
Sam Jackson as Andrew is wonderfully odious – egregiously mannered and behaved in a caricature that is alternately misogynistic, homophobic, patronising, condescending and contemptuous, and sometimes a combination thereof. Had this been billed as a pantomime, you can guess the audience’s reaction.
The actors were working with a tight stage and a lot of scene changes, but thanks to Toby Bruton’s direction and Esther Bishop’s organised production there was no danger of momentum being sucked out of the unfolding drama.
The whole thing basically works and, despite the deployment of that sledgehammer (or maybe because of it) is a good piece of theatre, one written from the heart I suspect, and probably acted that way too. I’ve seen a number of similar pieces at this Fringe, all written and delivered with passion by young people looking to flag up that our elite has failed us and that another, more egalitarian model is required. Time to start listening.
