At the Cage, In the Vaults, Leake Street, SE1 7NN

I went to see this new play by Hayley Wareham on Saturday, 16th February. It was staged at the Vaults, Leake Street. What a surprise! What a delight!

I used to work at County Hall and have walked through the Leake Street Tunnel a thousand times to have lunch in Lower Marsh. Then (pre-1986) there was nothing there, a few parked cars and nothing but a dark long tunnel. On Saturday, I re-discovered it as the Graffiti Tunnel, with its hollowed-out vaults filled with evening venues, bars and restaurants and performance spaces, including the Vaults.

Walking through the Tunnel on Saturday, it reminded me of my first shock of visiting New York, with its rampant graffiti, the smell of spray cans, its ramshackle untidiness, and its challenge to mid-American values. I couldn’t help but think that my late parents, coming into town from Worcester Park, would have found the Tunnel similarly challenging.

It was exciting, would the play be equally so? A first play from a new author: the warning lights were flashing red; three young women were standing in what appeared to be the performance area; what were they doing? Then suddenly in unison, they broke out into blank verse; we were off.

The play was between the three women on a bare stage with 4 props, three balloons and a cake. It was minimalist and the directing was spare, perhaps spartan. But the dialogue was rich, replete with anger and humour in almost equal parts. It was delivered by the three actors, Isabel Stone, Alice Vilanculo and the author, Wareham herself, sometimes in chorus, sometimes in the round, like a hymn or a madrigal, sometimes solo.

It was frequently repetitive, but rather than being boring, the repetition served to emphasise and dramatise the described action, which was about not only male violence against women and their children, but also of the violence of mean, uncaring bureaucracy against women in particular and the poor in general.

But the dialogue was not virulently anti-men, nor particularly anti-bureaucratic but more a sad, wry account of the awful destructiveness of inadequate welfare services in a market driven economy. It explored and explained how mother and child victims are gradually isolated by casual relocation away from friends, school and hope.

The play was superbly acted by three young women, who avoided the trap of melodramatic exaggeration and coped with a complex inter-play of roles and parts, whilst at the same time delivering the lines both boldly and articulately, which of course speaks volumes for the direction: Director Chris White.

One audience colleague pre-announced that he could not quite see how male violence and humour could work together. I think he probably knows now that it can be done and has been done so by this very subtle and mature first play by a promising author. Keep an eye open for Hayley Wareham.