[title]
London is fucked because the London property market is fucked. If you were unaware of this fact, congratulations! You’re either a gazillionaire or you’ve had your spirit so crushed by our fair city that you’ve ceased to notice how dementedly unfair the place is.
Never mind, though. ‘This Is Private Property’ could be the show for you. Camden People’s Theatre’s first in-house work in yonks is an okay primer on the basics of what’s gone wrong: dramatically escalating rents; even more dramatic rises in house prices; buy-to-leave; councils flogging off their assets; the erosion of the social mechanisms that were supposed to provide the vulnerable with roofs over their heads.
The thing is, almost everybody who lives in London is aware of these problems, and Brian Logan’s affable but glib production provides nothing in the way of answers. It’s essentially a series of devised sketches on the housing crisis, delivered with puppyish enthusiasm by four performers oblivious to the fact they’re trading in the obvious.
There’s some mockery of BoJo, a game with chairs to illustrate the inflation of the market, a few Kafka-esque sketches on the benefits system, and an ongoing riff on the life and loves of billionaire property developer Nick Candy. It’s reasonable at diagnosing London’s symptoms but there’s no cure proposed, no furious call to arms, no intelligent attempt to look below the surface of the situation. If anything, it feels like it’s frittering its anger in the wrong places, with more ire for foreign buyers than for domestic politicians.
As the flagship show in CPT’s important looking, housing crisis-centric Whose London Is It Anyway? season, it’s a bit of a damp squib – more enjoyable than a trip to see a mortgage advisor but roughly as disappointing.