The Riots

The Riots - review

Tricycle Theatre, London




Michael Billington
The Guardian, Wednesday 23 November 2011
Article history



Asking why: Kingsley Ben-Adir and Steve Toussaint in The Riots by Gillian Slovo and directed by Nicolas Kent at the Tricycle. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Guardian


Once again, the theatre steals a march on officialdom. In the absence of any full public inquiry into the August riots, the Tricycle commissioned Gillian Slovo to create a verbatim piece on the events and their possible causes. And, if the result can hardly be expected to provide any definitive answers, it asks the right questions in a way that is clear, gripping and necessary.

The evening is in two distinct halves. In the first we get witness accounts, with film footage and street maps, of events in Tottenham on the night of 6 August. One thing emerges strongly: the failure of the police to inform Mark Duggan's family of either the facts or the circumstances of his shooting. This was the match that lit the bonfire.

But we then hear from the police themselves about the pressures they were under, from members of the Tottenham community caught up in the riots, and from both the victims and perpetrators of the looting. Everyone has a different perspective, but a youth worker puts it succinctly when he says: "You've got the legitimate anger; and then you've got, obviously, people who jump on that anger."

In the second, more reflective half a range of MPs, social workers and top police officers speculate on the underlying causes. Again, you get a wide range of opinions. Diane Abbott, the Hackney MP, sees what happened as a repeat of the race riots of the 1980s: a Manchester chief inspector, in Brixton in the 1980s, says events this time had a totally different feel. Michael Gove describes rioters as "a vicious, lawless and immoral minority"; John McDonnell, Labour MP, relates the riots to damaging cuts in youth services.

You get a plurality of views, but what emerges is a widespread sense of people, and not just the young, seeking revenge on an unjust society. It is fascinating. But is it theatre?

I would offer a resounding "Yes" because one of the medium's many functions, apart from giving ecstasy and entertainment, is to offer information and provoke debate. Slovo's skillfully edited text and Nicolas Kent's well-ordered production do precisely that. In little more than four months, they have amassed a huge range of material and posed the questions that parliament has failed properly to address. Why did the summer riots happen? And what are the lessons we can learn?

From a 14-strong cast, I would single out Steve Toussaint, lending authority to a consultant on racial equality who, asked to sum up the rioters in three words, says "frustrated, angry and British"; Cyril Nri as a black police superintendent; and Kingsley Ben-Adir as a youth worker. Dona Croll as Diane Abbott, and Tim Woodward as a series of authority figures, also impress. And, even if the show has an inevitable London bias, it passes a vital test: it offers us the evidence, and leaves us to form our own opinion as to why there is such anger on Britain's streets.