In Nadia Fall‘s new production at the National Theatre’s pop-up space, The Shed, she weaves together a narrative from 48 hours of interviews conducted with young people living in a large interim homeless shelter in East London.
Listening to these voices could have made for a grim, dispiriting evening of theatre, and sure, there is a good deal of misery and awfulness in these lives, but the overwhelming emotion turns out to be one of hope. It’s truly amazing what, especially young, people can get through and still come out the other side with a cheery optimism.
Target East is a fictional institution overseen by the stern but caring manager, Sharon (a confident and nuanced performance from Ashley McGuire), and her not quite so effective colleague played by Trevor Michael Georges. Sharon turned the place around when she arrived and believes in her ability to help such troubled youngsters although she also has a healthy streak of cynicism (“We’re just benefits experts these days – we don’t to social work no more”).
Her (in the horrible parlance of today) clientele are a mix of older teenagers, all made homeless, mostly from abuse or neglect from their parents. Some are pregnant or young mums, and most of the boys have kids themselves that they no longer see.
Rather than a straight narrative, Home is a patchwork of these stories, intertwining, meeting, and sometimes clashing in the clinical surroundings of Target East, Ruth Sutcliffe‘s stark but effective design spilling out into the lobby of The Shed, made into an institutional room full of anti-STD posters and whiteboards, and upwards to the balcony of a high rise.
The conceit is that it’s us, the audience, who are the ones conducting the interviews, and we sit passively as the cast catch our eye and hold our gaze as they tell us their tales of being chucked out by mum’s new boyfriend, or entering Britain in the back of a lorry, or of having to care for parents and snapping under the strain.
Music is used beautifully throughout, with Beyonce and Rihanna songs given a surprising poignancy in the mouths of such lost souls, and there’s also original music from Tom Green, including a haunting spiritual that you’ll be humming throughout the interval.
Jade, a heavily pregnant girl, speaks only in ‘beatbox’ but her phone conversation to some nameless official translates very easily in the mind, while her vocal stylings accompany the rest of the cast superbly, all of whom can sing and rap wonderfully.
Two parts of the evening crackle in particular. The first is Eritrean Girl’s (yes, names would have been more helpful) terror as she’s made to lie in the back of a lorry while being brought into the country, and the other is Tattoo Boy’s rant, a particularly angry version of “I’m not racist but….” which made some of the audience visibly discomfited.
At times the production feels a little directionless, but then so are the lives of the people depicted and that’s possibly the point. Characters come in and out of focus as the cast cross on stage, sometimes dancing, joshing with each other, sometimes running at full pelt around the smallish Shed. It’s lively, it’s textured, and a little chaotic, but that’s its charm.
I was also gratified that politics weren’t left out totally, and if you come to this piece with a pre-conceived idea that somehow it’s easy to get a council house by being an immigrant, or by getting yourself knocked up, or by being kicked out of the parental home, you’ll walk away thinking perhaps things aren’t quite that Daily Mail simple.
WHAT: Home
WHERE: The Shed, National Theatre, London
WHEN: Until September 7, various times
TICKETS: £12 and £20
MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:
RUNNING TIME: 2 hours 20 minutes
WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yes, but perhaps in a month
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