REVIEWS
"Flashes of exuberant
humour ... suggest this is a writer well worth watching."
Spectator, 24 September 2005
"Six versatile actors
play numerous roles with a wry slant and superb timing…they
are tightly marshalled by Adam Barnard, who has an eclectic
yet unified style"
Time Out, 21 September 2005
"It's a thought-provoking
play, I am sure Ruth would enjoy it."
Pandora, Independent, 22 September
2005
"The writing, acting and directing, particularly in the newspaper office and parliament scenes, is sublime... it would be great if this play could be shown to kids in every school in the country."
Rogues and Vagabonds, 23 September 2005
"Go and see it and be edutained."
Culture Wars, 19 September 2005
"Chief interest is ... to talent-spot Hannah Boyde as Amy"
The Stage, 19 September 2005
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Spectator
24 September 2005
There's another promising apprentice piece
at the newly consecrated space below the Theatre Museum in
Covent Garden. John Finnemore's play examines the consequences
of a school strike. With two dozen scenes and two dozen characters
it feels more like a TV drama than a play but there are flashes
of exuberant humour that suggest this is a writer well worth
watching.
--
Time Out
Benjamin Davis
21 September 2005
Amy Evans is 12. She doesn’t want to
go to school any more. She wants to be a [*]. Or something,
Just as Melville Bartleby would ‘prefer not to’,
Amy would ‘rather not’.
That’s pretty much it, apart from the
crisis that inexplicably afflicts the school once one pupil
starts attending. Six versatile actors (Paul O’Mahony
and John Sheerman especially) play numerous roles with a wry
slant and superb timing, such as the gathering media horde
who are only interested ‘if the girl’s pretty
and the school’s minging’. As with Amelia Bullmore’s
‘Mammals’, there’s a lot of humour in the
old (-ish) playing the young. They are tightly marshalled
by Adam Barnard, who has an eclectic yet unified style.
The writer John Finnemore thinks he is exposing
some scandalous flaw at the heart of our education system.
Which is that some kids are too imaginative for school. And
most don’t want to go. Hot damn, someone tell the Education
Minister the state school reform debate has been blown wide
open! Or, rather, don’t bother. Apathy is the new rebellion.
* cut by Activated Image so as not to
reveal plot details
--
Pandora, Independent
22 September 2005
Some MPs do enjoy a spot of irony. Barry Shearman - the left-winger who chairs the Education Select Committee in the Commons - has just heard that his son, a 25-year-old budding actor, is to appear in a new play about the state of education in the country today.
"It's called Amy Evans's Strike, and is about a schoolgirl who downs her crayons in protest at the goings-on at her school," he tells me. "My son John has landed the part of a Tory MP."
Ever the proud father, Mr Shearman plans to arrange a trip to the Courtyard Theatre in Covent Garden and has invited the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, to join him.
"It's a thought-provoking play," he adds. "I am sure Ruth would enjoy it."
--
Rogues and Vagabonds website
Joanna Bacon
Friday 23rd September 2005
Theatre Review | AMY EVANS' STRIKE | Activated Image @ The Courtyard, London
Simon Masterton (Mr Christie) & Hannah Boyde (Amy)
Photograph: Peter Collins/LoveDecoy.com
Amy Evans' Strike began life on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2001, writes Joanna Bacon, and is revived by Activated Image at The Courtyard in Covent Garden before touring regional theatres in December and the New Year with schools workshops.
The original music by Peter Michaels accompanies some preparation of the space while the audience settles, and then the actors become individual children getting ready to go to school on an alarm cue. The first scene establishes the classroom situation and young Amy expresses politely but firmly that she would rather not do any more schoolwork.
The twelve year-olds (as well as all the other parts) are played by adult actors. This conceit, which can be irritating in the wrong hands, was largely done responsibly, with some very nice detail in the relationships between the children themselves and the teacher Mr Christie (beautifully played by Simon Masterton). In scene two, set in the staff corridor where Amy is sent ‘‘for punishment’’, the other kids reassure her that ‘‘they’’ can’t ‘‘do’’ anything, and Amy’s meeting with the Headmaster confirms this. When Mr Castleman says ‘‘it isn’t up to you’’, Amy’s reply ‘‘yes it is’’ brings one of the hugest laughs of the evening from the audience.
The play explores the public and the private effects of Amy’s ‘strike’. While local media attention leads to national tabloid coverage, mostly in the hope of ‘shafting’ the Minister of Education, Amy’s home life is affected by the stress of the situation, even within what is, for the most part, a supportive if quirky environment. By the end of act one, her mother is depressed, the Headmaster has told the press to fuck off and all hell is breaking loose.
John Finnemore has written a play which explores the purpose of education, but in the face of Amy’s and other various hilarious defences, including that ‘‘writing a letter from Bosworth Field won’t help me pass my exam’’, the teachers don’t seem to say much. In act two we are still hearing that learning is a waste of time. For those of us who know — or at least hope — that ‘education’ is more than training and that the important thing is to teach people how to think, the real message seems a long time coming, notwithstanding the fact that almost every scene is a gem in itself. The writing, acting and directing, particularly in the newspaper office and parliament scenes, is sublime, as is the cameo of Lilian, the school secretary.
I am not sure who will be paying £15 (£12 concs.) to see this on the London fringe, but whatever happens during its West End run, I hope the schools tour is a success. This is surely where its value lies — it would be great if this play could be shown to kids in every school in the country.
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Culture Wars
Dennis Hayes
19 September 2005
'Edutainment' in education has a bad name, but in the theatre a play that is entertaining, about education, and educational, perhaps deserves the positive appellation 'edutainment'.
Until the interval, the play works by intriguing the audience as to how the situation created by 12 year-old Amy Evans - convincingly played without sentimentality by Hannah Boyde - going on 'strike' will be resolved. Amy goes on strike in a special sense. She is a likeable, polite, and clever girl who has suddenly acquired a clear vision of what she wants to do in life and this does not include getting educational qualifications. So, while continuing to attend school, she does no work.
This is not an anti-educational play but it does question the contemporary functionalist view of the need to gain qualifications, which is the only defence of education her teachers can offer. Amy's other goal is, as she says, 'secret'. She thus becomes the catalyst that allows playwright John Finnemore to let his cast entertain us by portraying, with gentle wit and humour, some well-known educational stereotypes. Loud-mouthed rebellious teenagers, conformist schoolmates, severe, experienced teachers, a relatively new head teacher, amoral, muck-raking and destructive journalists, a New Labour education minister full of the rhetoric of educational success, and Amy's loving but 'dysfunctional' family, all appear in short set pieces that drive the play towards that interval. The cast of six play all these roles, more than thirty in total, and they switch effortlessly and quickly between being children, parents and professionals. (If you are in the front row, as I was, watch your feet as they rush about.)
During the interval the talk was all about whether Finnemore could end the play without disappointment once Amy's 'secret' ambitions was revealed. We had a sinking feeling. Quite wrongly, as it turned out. Amy Evans' Strike is the sort of play you must see - once. It relies on Amy's revelation for its surprises and success. That's why you won't find out from this review what happens. Go and see it and be edutained.
What can be said by way of a conclusion, is that the lesson of the play is that, despite the reduction of politics to education, education, education, and the reduction of education to qualifications, qualifications, qualifications, there are other values that are more important than education. This message is not a philistine but a philosophical one.
Dennis Hayes is the head of the Centre for Professional Learning at Canterbury Christ Church University, and co-ordinates the Institute of Ideas Education Forum. He will be speaking on education at the Battle of Ideas festival in London, 29-30 October.
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The Stage
John Thaxter
Monday 19 September 2005
The ‘strike’ is nothing of the sort. A 12-year old pupil simply announces her firm intention to apply herself only to school work she thinks will contribute to her future career - whatever that is - plus a refusal to accept detention as punishment for non-conformity.
The staff are mostly sympathetic to an otherwise well-behaved youngster but fellow pupils see her stand as an opportunity to rebel and soon the school is a target for media attention as the so-called strike gets plastered across front-pages and trumpeted on radio, eventually to unfortunate professional effects for the headmaster and the Education minister who is also the local MP.
John Finnemore’s play was a critical success at Edinburgh in 2001. Most members of that original cast repeat their roles, four years older, while still looking equally at home as school-age kids and authority figures.
Chief interest is in seeing the Theatre Museum’s neglected performing space re-opened as a studio theatre, with a new entrance on Wellington Street, and to talent-spot Hannah Boyde as Amy, giving what looks like an audition for the conjuring governess in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, Susie Cousins as her long-suffering Mum, Simon Masterton as the history teacher and Paul O’Mahony as the luckless headmaster.
Equally effective performances come from Rachel Sternberg, impressively doubling as the French teacher and Amy’s infant brother, and John Sheerman as an investigative reporter.
