Brighton Fringe 2024

Chopped Liver and Unions

Blue Fire Theatre Co.

Genre: Biographical Drama, Feminist Theatre, Historical, Live Music, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre

Venue: Lantern Theatre, Brighton

Festival: Brighton Fringe

Low Down

Review

“The Union Makes Us Strong” a red tablecloth emblazons words at a desk where a woman sits typing, next an in-tray, a rustle of papers and lamp.

It’s 1956, and Sarah Wesker (Lottie Walker) tours this desk round her life, backed by posters and an offstage piano as she stands up to sing – and coax a rousing chorus from the audience. J. J. Pepink’s Chopped Liver and Unions is directed by Laura Killeen at Lantern Theatre, Brighton till May 5^th.

Sarah Wesker (1901-71) – and you’ll have clocked the name – was a trades-union activist and lifelong communist who in Walker’s hands winningly self-deprecates you into her confidence. Chopped liver we’ll take on trust, though you can smell the onions, not unions.

Everything in the East End isn’t so much mean as ”careful” – everything’s as we’d say recycled. Not a word used here. It’s a superbly adroit, period-aware script.

It’s a winning performance too: Walker’s wholly believable, excellent at self-deprecation, possessed of a strong alto voice and often itching to burst into song. “We couldn’t afford to make up our own tunes” she quips, when ‘Glory Glory Alleluja’ gets repurposed.

Admittedly there’s an anachronism: ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated’ dates from after Sarah’s time, of course, the early 1970s. But who care? Great tune. And the excellent composer/arranger James Hall appears on a pre-recorded piano.

And we’re made to join in, especially in the tongue-twisting ‘Sister Sarah Sews’ which Walker runs at a consonantly impossible rate to garner a cheer from an audience long given up trying to follow.

Garbed in a  homely no-nonsense East-End dress dating from anywhere 1930-60 (Zoe Harvey-Lee’s excellent costuming), Walker travels along her present, then sprints back years as she stands, occasionally sits at a chair pulled out downstage (Fiona Auty’s set includes a backstage projection of period union photographs as well as banners).

Everyone’s from somewhere else, mostly Jewish. Sarah’s political life started at 16 in Goodman’s where she agitated for higher wagers forming the Clothmakers’ Union and moving on to Rego’s where she organised another schmatter strike. Indeed her language is often peppered with Yiddish, casually tossed over her shoulder. Sexual liberation after the First War had many in her generation labelled shiksas (gentile sluts).

But whatever you do, don’t call her “fiery”. It’s never “commanding” or “magnificent” “a great rallying cry”. No, a woman is always “fiery”.

At 25 Sarah was deemed past marrying, but she’s alluded to the ‘loss’ of Mikey, fellow unionist, with whom she had an informal love-affair over many years.

The crown of Sarah’s activism was helping to organise and fight in the Battle of Cable Street on October 3^rd 1936. It’s detailed with images on the projector. We know the story, but not who was airbrushed: Sarah herself.

And we remember the Irish dockers the Blackshirts hoped to win over standing with Jewish comrades, and – less remembered – Jamaicans and Somalians doing the same. Later, when uniforms were banned, it was more difficult to pick out fascists.

Later, there’s heartbreak but no bitter feelings, and the diminution of the Communist cause for any over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of August 24^th 1939, which left many Communists bemused.

The British Communist party to whom Sarah looked for leadership, obeyed the Soviet Union. One old activist, secretary of the Wimbledon branch, told me years ago that he and many left and signed up for the RAF.

Sarah remains loyal, but to Communism, not the Soviet Union. We’re reminded by posters (making no apology for their politics: “Sing the songs! Join the revolution!”) we’re in the centenary year of the first Labour Government: itself smeared with Soviet Communism.

So it’s salutary to celebrate what socialism stands for, as opposed to what we’ll get under a now donor-led party. By the end of the show, it’s clear the packed audience share the same thoughts as Sarah. Or perhaps Walker has spawned a roomful of lefties. Not an overtly theatrical production, it’s deliberately closer to vaudeville.

By now you’ll have twigged who Sarah is.

In fact, there’s a strong connection with the Lantern/ACT theatre. Its Co-principal actor Daniel Finlay son of Frank who created Ronnie Kahn in Chicken Soup With Barley reveals something we’d never know. The original ‘Lily’ was corrected more boldly to ‘Sarah’. Sarah is incidentally, referred to in the cast as “fiery”. You’ll want to cheer at the end, along with everyone else. Highly Recommended.

Published May 4, 2024May 4, 2024 by Simon Jenner