30 April 2008 Written by Stephe Harrop Print This Post  Email This Post

Cannibalism, it seems, is very chic this spring. There are certainly some grisly goings-on in Lucy Kirkwood’s Tinderbox, a bloodthirsty black comedy of climate-change, meat, and perverted old Englands of the imagination.

In a convincingly grubby Bradford of the not-too-distant future, an illegal immigrant artist washes up in a butcher’s shop, and ends up embroiled in a seriously gruesome ménage. Lucy Osborne’s dingy set has a real aroma of ageing meat about it, even the light looks slightly stale, and this accomplished and understated design lends an air of menace to the grim farce that follows.

“An Englishman’s home is his castle, but an Englishman’s shop is his Empire” declares Saul Everard the butcher. Kirkwood’s bold way with metaphor promises well, but what might have been a truly uncomfy tale about warped national mythologies festering in modern Britain instead settles for reheated truths about the nature of power. Still, the play is very funny, and some of the language is joyous. The slapstick may go on a bit, but at its best the rhythmic prose moves with the spasmodic frenzy of a hanged man’s feet dancing on air.

The actors, by and large, make the most of these pungent mouthfuls. Jamie Foreman manages to be both appalling and creepily seductive as the monstrous Everard, jovially masticating his way through some of the best lines of the night. Nigel Betts and Sartaj Garewal fall somewhere between Pinter and Panto in their frantic succession of supporting roles, which get increasingly bonkers with each jolly tinkle of the shop bell. Bryan Dick works hard as the interloper who develops an unexpected passion for the meat trade, and brings great manic charm and glinting-eyed energy to his dirty dealings with the butcher’s wife. As the traumatised, sweetly sluttish Vanessa (“in the eighteenth century, she would have been a whoreish orange-seller”) Sheridan Smith looks and sounds far too young, but she’s delightfully flighty and touching and deranged. As the characters wade through deepening rivers of blood, it’s her fate that holds the audience’s attention and sympathy.

In the end, this is an entertaining and strangely uplifting little piece, if scarcely profound. So go and see Tinderbox for the language, and the laughs, and a wee bit of intellectual titillation. And do make sure you know the words to “Jerusalem” before you go. All the words.

Tinderbox is at the Bush Theatre until 24 May.

Image Top: Bryan Dick and Sheridan Smith in Tinderbox at the Bush Theatre, photograph by Simon Annand.
Image Bottom: Sheridan Smith, Jamie Foreman and Bryan Dick, photograph by Simon Annand.