Any tourists who think that this is a little-known play by Shakespeare will have a big surprise when they turn up at the Globe and discover that the marble pillars have been tucked away behind black plastic and the stage transformed into multi-cultural Camden today. Tourists may disapprove but Shakespeare would no doubt have understood Ché Walker’s desire to feed off the language of the drug dealers, junkies, bouncers, whores and drag queens who haunt the streets of Camden. But there’s a closer comparison with Shakespeare’s contemporary, Ben Jonson, although where Jonson was invariably satirical, Walker can be a touch sentimental. Only big man Cockburn is completely without redeeming features, a violent, raving racist who combines pride in being British with a lucrative trade in selling crack.
Cockburn provides what little plot there is. For the most part, the swirling action comprises dozens of overlapping vignettes, some more effective than others. Walker’s script, which is alive to the area’s history, could easily lose half an hour, but there are no complaints about the acting in Matthew Dunster’s sympathetic production in which the performers are as exposed as the groundlings and got thoroughly soaked on press night. Jo Martin’s gutsy lap-dancer battles with her daughter, Naana Agyei-Ampadu’s Babydoll, who at 16 longs to take up her mother’s trade. Huss Garbiya’s junkie defends his home in a public telephone box against Trystan Gravelle’s Withnail-like, self-obsessed actor who is desperate to persuade an agent to come and see his one-man show about that other Camden local, Walter Sickert. Beru Tessema is also striking as the wired-up Miruts hissing ‘hashandweed’ in the ears of those passing by and John Stahl adds weight as the choric hot dog man. In the end I was won over by the size of the play’s heart and the strength of the performances.
