Comedy relives Sixties struggles
Red Ladder Theatre's musical, Sex & Docks & Rock 'n' Roll is coming to Greentop Circus Centre, Sheffield on 4 December.
A NEW musical comedy set during the Liverpool dock strike of 1960 and written by Boff Whalley, founder member of the band Chumbawamba, is being performed by Red Ladder Theatre in Sheffield on Saturday night.
Sex & Docks & Rock ‘n’ Roll, following the trials and tribulations of striking dock worker Ronnie and his wife Jean, arrives at Greentop Circus Centre near Meadowhall on a national tour.
It is Leeds-based radical theatre company Red Ladder’s second visit to the venue where last year they presented Riot, Rebellion & Bloody Insurrection, also by Boff.
“We’re touring to a real variety of venues from village halls to community centres to reach as many people as we can,” says Red Ladder’s Liverpool-born artistic director Rod Dixon, who is directing a cast of seven actor-musicians including ex-Chumbawamba drummer Harry Hamer.
Described as a family comedy about love, music and the power of a good cup of tea, it centres on the Scouse McDermott clan in 1960 when Liverpool seafarers and dockers were on strike.
With Uncle Paddy, leader of the Seamen’s Reform Movement, in jail Ronnie sits in his pants all day reading the Daily Worker and watching Z-Cars as his harried wife Jean tries to keep the household together (sneaking the occasional peek at a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover).
Meanwhile, teenage son Jack’s band have the biggest gig of their lives on Saturday night but have one major problem: they can’t find a drummer. Could bobble-hatted cousin Barry be just what the band are looking for?
“There’s nothing like a good strike to divide a family,” according to Boff. “The beginning of the Sixties was a time of big change for a lot of people in this country – rock ‘n’ roll, feminism and real union militancy all scrapping for space, not just in the news but in kitchens and living rooms across the country.
“This was a time when Lady Chatterley’s Lover sold 200,000 copies on its first day on sale after being banned. Big London record companies were telling The Beatles that ‘guitar groups are dead’.
“Strike leaders were regularly put in jail. The state’s machinery was constantly playing catch-up with ordinary people and their culture, and through it all ran a vein of irreverent humour. That’s what this play tries to capture. “
Director Dixon admits it is a hard show to categorise. “There is an element of panto in it or I guess it’s a social musical but it’s unique what Boff is doing which is taking a real event in history and putting it in a comic setting but at the same time showing how it relates to 2010.”
Few people these days know much about the Liverpool dock strike. “It’s part of radical history which has been suppressed,” says Dixon.
“The union leader was jailed for mutiny because he announced the strike while he was on board ship. But it’s also about the dawn of the Sixties when sexual liberation hasn’t really reached working-class families. And yet they were buying Lady Chatterley’s Lover.”
Red Ladder have been flying the flag for political theatre since 1968, surviving by responding to the prevailing political mood of the country.
“During Thatcher’s time we had to go off the radar,” says Dixon and then in the early years of New Labour there was little appetitie for agitprop.
Artistic director for the past four years, he says: “We have put ourselves back into the radical arena. But our work doesn’t scream politics, it’s about capturing moments of change. You don’t want to ram politics down people’s throats.”
Sex & Docks & Rock ‘n’ Roll is at Greentop Circus Centre, St Thomas Building, Holywell Road, on Saturday.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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