Jeremy Goldstein’s genre-busting roadshow presents a line-up of extraordinary individuals with the power to inspire
Speaking truth to power – confronting those who hold institutional authority – could not be more topical. Yet when Jeremy Goldstein poses the question, "Who has power over you and what do you want to say to them?" he illustrates it with a poetic and honest account of his own experience. He enters into a dialogue with his late father, Mick, exploring their difficult relationship through correspondence shared just before he died and the manuscript of an autobiographical play discovered after his death.
That his father was one of Harold Pinter’s closest friends from boyhood – part of his Hackney Gang – adds a vital ingredient. Larger-than-life images of Mick, Pinter and co look on from screens above and Goldstein’s script is enriched by the eloquent poetry and prose of another gang member: octogenarian theatre-maker and poet Henry Woolf, who collaborated with Goldstein from his home in Canada.
Before we encounter the brave, articulate folk who dare speak their truth to individuals or institutions they want to call out, Goldstein takes the stage. He infuses his words, his father’s and Woolf’s with an infectious energy, bounding between the on-screen images, including Goldstein sprouting angel’s wings, appropriate to Woolf’s closing lines: "You’ve got to slide between the living and the dead / You’ve got to open up a window in your head / You’ve got to take the world and shake it / Crush it and remake it … Blow our trumpets angels."
The show is hard to pigeonhole, but it certainly makes great theatre, especially thanks to director Jen Heyes. She blends Goldstein's liveliness with the powerful images, which share the stage with Ed Hall’s glorious banners and stunning photography by Sarah Hickson – all effectively lit by Nigel Edwards and underscored by the sounds of David Bowie (as arranged by Sven Ratzke). But there’s more to the evening: a sharing of revelations, a calling out by nine individuals of perceived injustices. Again, it’s down to Heyes and Hickson that they fulfil their potential to thrill and move, for Hickson provides portraits of the participants and Heyes, in double-quick time, put them through their paces earlier that day.
At London's Bloomsbury Festival we meet a motley crew of Truth to Power challengers, including Laura, a self-confessed "revolting midwife" who's rebelling on behalf of all mothers against a system that "undermines women’s ability to give birth". Ruth, the 84-year-who travelled on the Kindertransport, is joined by her son Bruce to call out warmongers. Erkan – slim, immaculately bearded and gorgeously clad in leather – proudly proclaims himself "Arabic, Turkish, queer, trans and Muslim". They are just three of nine participants, each of whom presented as beautifully and bravely as the next; and as the Café continues to tour, I’ve no doubt it will attract equally extraordinary, inspiring and assertive speakers of truth to power, wherever it goes.
By Judi Herman
Photos by Sarah Hickson
Truth to Power Cafe runs Friday 15 November. Phone for times. From £5. Edge Hill Arts Centre, Ormskirk, L39 4QP. 016 9558 4480.
Then Saturday 16 November. Phone for times. From £5. Unity Theatre, Liverpool, L1 9BG. 0844 873 2888.
For more info see JR listings. For 2020 dates and to take part visit www.truthtopower.co.uk.