Our veteran theatre critic, BELLA BARTOCK, slips into her kitten heels and puts on her pearls for a big night out in Coulsdon, where the performances on stage were truly electric
Un’impresa: Indianna Scorziello gives a bravura performance as The Maniac, here with Zack Hall as the gormless constable. At least, that’s what we think she says
I was quite taken by surprise when the doorbell rang. It was Kenny, my nephew, at the time we had arranged for him to pick me up. But I hadn’t heard him pulling up on the drive.
Where was the Roller, I asked him, and he told me he’d got rid of it, something about reducing our “carbon footprint”. “Don’t be so silly,” I said. “How can a Rolls Royce, with four wheels, have a footprint?”
Kenny said he’d gone electric, that he’d got a really good price for the old gas-guzzling Rolls, and besides, there was a terrific discount deal on used Teslas. “People just don’t seem to want them any more,” Kenny said.
When I looked over his shoulder, I was horrified by what I saw on the drive. But it was too late to do anything about it now. We were supposed to be at the Coulsdon Community Centre in 45 minutes, and we had my friend Claudia to collect on the way.
I tried not to get the pearls caught on the door as I squeezed myself into the uncomfortable back seats. This was not what I was used to at all. I shuddered when I considered what Claudia would make of it.
Low farce: it is all action on stage for the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon’s performance of Accidental Death Of An Anarchist
In case you don’t know, Claudia de Boozy, one of my oldest of old friends from our time at our now sadly closed prep school, is quite a woman. Some say she resembles Julia Child, the old TV chef, though Claudia’s bigger, and if she is let loose in the kitchen, she’d burn a boiled egg.
Claudia has recently opted to downsize from her comfortable three-bed semi into something called a “later living community”, somewhere near Purley, where she’s now living cheek by jowl to a load of other retirees, and running out of cash worryingly quickly.
Her new flat is modest and small, more of a bedsit, really, though she is able to visit the in-house café for a £8 cup of coffee in the mornings. But she told me that she only goes there twice a week, because she can’t afford the prices. And as for the gymnasium… “Darling Claudia,” I’d said to her on the phone when arranging our night out at the theatre, “you do realise you’re paying for the gym out of your rent and service charge? You really should make use of it.”
“It’s far too late in the day for me to start pumping iron, Bella,” she said. A point on which I agreed.
When the whispering Tesla pulled up outside her new block of flats, Claudia hobbled out. She was using a walking stick. “How am I supposed to get into to that?” she shouted at Kenny while pointing to the cast on her leg, the result of an injury from her first visit to her later living gym. Pumping irony, if you will.
Police Three: from left, Joe Wilson, Hannah Montgomery and Adam Ribeiro as some of the Met’s finest in TWC’s Accidental Death Of An Anarchist
Kenny drove Claudia and I to Coulsdon with Claudia’s leg sticking out of the back window of the horrible car, the two of us in the back contorted to fit into the inadequate space.
As we turned into Barrie Close, my mind was full of thoughts about writing Kenny out of my will as a result of this dreadful decision when Claudia blurted out, “So what’s this Accidental Death Of An Anti-Christ all about, then?”
Maybe the very strong painkillers she had been taking, or the vodka she was sipping from her hip flask, had taken a toll. “I went down to the later living community’s shared space to use their tablet thing, and when I tried to internet search for this play, I couldn’t find anything,” Claudia said.
“It was easier to find how to report a missed bins collection on the council’s website.”
I put Claudia right.
Accidental Death Of An Anarchist is the latest production by the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon, whose performances we had admired and enjoyed in the past. This is a 1970 farce by an Italian playwright, Dario Fo, adapted into English by Tom Basden, which is full of lefty concerns about a police state and the accountability of authority.
“An anarchist!” Claudia screeched. I couldn’t help thinking she was turning into Edith Evans.
Claudia is somewhat set in her ways. She still refers to her address as “Croydon, Surrey“, as if the last 60 years had never happened. I suspect she may even have voted for Reform at the last election. She’s never really taken to that Philp chap.
“An anarchist??! And I’m missing Britain’s Got Talent for this?”
Half a bottle of Merlot before curtain up, Claudia was suitably calmed.
And she was about to witness some real talent, too.
Quick change: Indianna Scorziello (left), as The Maniac, assumes a series of disguises, as Lauren Edmonds plays journalist Fi Phelan unhappily caught up in the play’s denouement
The TWC production of Anarchist is nothing short of un’impresa by Indianna Scorziello, who in a small cast carries the play from beginning to end with an extraordinarily versatile performance.
“I didn’t dare take my eyes off her for a moment,” Claudia said as we emerged into the chill night air afterwards. It didn’t feel as if it was the other half-bottle of Merlot talking, either.
The emphasis with Anarchist is on low farce, a post-war, post-civil rights era Italian farce, from a time when tensions between Italy’s Communists and the Establishment were taut, and some suspects held in custody really would somehow manage to fall from a fourth-floor window at the local police station.
Suitably updated to London, this version is being performed just a few days after the Met Police announced it is to install Live Facial Recognition cameras in Croydon, before there’s been any legal safeguards agreed by Parliament. So no modern relevance at all then…
TWC productions are a real community effort, with a dedicated team of regular volunteers front of house and back-stage as well as acting. This production, though, sees fewer in the spotlight on stage than usual – and that places possibly greater pressure on those in the cast.
Joe Wilson, as the Superintendent, looms large, in every sense, alongside Adam Ribeiro as DI Daisy. The detectives are like a pair of hapless escapees from an episode of The Sweeney, epitomising the rough, tough approach to policing that ended in the 1970s, supposedly. Not that either of them were actually there when the anarchist accidentally fell out of the window to his death, of course…
Zack Hall as the gormless constable – at least that’s what I thought they called him – fits his role very well, too, while Hannah Montgomery (as DI Burton) and Lauren Edmonds (mostly as Fi Phelan, the journalist with the awkward questions) complete the cast with some panache.
The Sweeney: Joe Wilson shows Adam Ribeiro who is boss
All played out on an impressive set, the staging is remarkably close to the original, from the scribblings on the whiteboard to Scorziello’s rapid-fire quick changes, and a remarkable resemblance to Chaplin’s Great Dictator as The Maniac.
After a slow beginning (why play The Clash, when you could have chosen Anarchy In The UK?), the piece picks up pace through the second act and especially into the breathless third act, in the true tradition of farce, with scenes-within-scenes being played out frantically in different parts of the stage all at the same time.
Scorziello has been a constant in the casts of TWC performances for 15 years, performing a range of roles as part of the impressive AmDram group’s company, from Miranda in a steampunk Shakespeare Tempest, to Wendy in Peter Pan, and a bravura performance more recently in Machinal.
“Did she go to RADA?” Claudia asked as we were leaving. I explained that as far as I knew, Scorziello worked as a chef and had never had the chance to go to drama school. “Extraordinary,” Claudia said as, somehow, we got back into the car.
“Britain really has got talent,” she said as we dropped her off at her later living community.
I leaned forward to Kenny in the front of the Tesla as it pulled away. “And you return this monstrosity whence it came in the morning,” I said, “or you’ll be falling out of a window yourself.”
Accidental Death Of An Anarchist is being performed by the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon at 7.45pm from Wednesday April 9 to Saturday April 12, with a 3pm matinee on April 12. Tickets are on sale now – £12 or £9 concessions. Click here to book your preferred dates and find out more about Accidental Death Of An Anarchist and the Theatre Workshop Coulsdon
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