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Theatre 503, London
Peering back 30 years to the clashes that took place on our streets between rightwing extremists and the Anti-Nazi League in the early 1980s, Sharon Clark's London debut is strong and slippery, cleverly fingering myths about extremism and slyly influencing expectations. In three stories ingeniously pulled together on the day of a protest, we meet two very different men who are preparing to march on opposite sides, and the lonely, bitter Ruth, a woman whose obsessive love has turned to hate.
Young car mechanic Malcolm is struggling to look after his grownup sister with learning difficulties, Wendy, and protect her from an abusive world. He does it with patience and love even though he knows that life and opportunity is passing him by. But he's fuelled with anger. One of the play's best scenes simply consists of the tearing of pages from a book. Clark is a writer who knows exactly when to throw a punch.
Meanwhile, smooth teacher Dennis is also getting ready to march, at least he would be if he could only get his manipulative lover, Anna, who knows all his weak spots, out of his bed. Nothing is quite what it first appears in an evening that does quite a lot of manipulating itself, neatly shifting sympathies, drip- feeding and withholding information from the audience with care and flair.
There are moments when it feels as if the ingenious structure has sometimes distracted the writer from the actual writing, which can be clunky, and the female characters – with the exception of Wendy, who is played beautifully by Sarah Hoare – are oddly unsympathetic.
But this is a brilliantly acted and gripping 85 minutes that suggests we all have demons and the capacity to be monsters, and that our personal and political actions seldom tally.
