Let’s face it; we need more productions like From England with Love—ones that make the UK, as a character, turn-inward and begin to question: who am I really?
We know the historical answer to this question—I am steeped in institutional education, secular Christianity and a class system built on strata of a workforce lead by figureheads. But in light of Brexit, a global health crisis, recession and the most right-wing government in generations, self-appraisal is beginning to take ‘centre-stage’. Good.
The show’s iconic image of young people in uniforms clasping backpacks promises a reflection on the above and is brought to life in the first instance to the score of Victorian hymn "Abide with Me". The poignant hand gestures which follow intimate an empathy with the human condition that will surface throughout—these are individuals with unique inner-lives and a capacity for hope which transcends circumstances. The delicacy of the gestures are reminiscent of symbolic Indian dance.
Playground machinations move around the stage with expert execution of flow, contact and levels, leaving the impression of a generation growing up together in all its interdependence and sweaty glory. Ties are loosened, shirts untuck, pony-tails swing.
With Shechter’s own contemporary-chaotic score, the piece transitions into Lord of the Flies territory. Figures on stage regress into more conflicting and grasping behaviours in fully embodied gestures that fight, take and repel. This momentum reaches a peak as several dancers lie, coffin-like, on the stage while others ravage their bodies as if devouring their inherent value. Cathedralesque shafts of light from designer Tim Visser heighten these moments of mortality defined.
Finally, after visions of the group dancing with the fervour of ‘live for the weekend’ culture, conforming to an environment where china and metal clink, and a sequence in which a few take up invisible arms, they reform into the quiet arrowhead they start in. This time, they are immersed in sounds of the rainforest, tentative and disturbed by nature—a nice comment on people as a conditioned, urban species, divorced from native environments.
From England with Love is a moving piece of theatre in which themes of societal conditioning, fierce competition and fragile aspiration run deep, made even more tender by the brilliance of the ensemble.
Whether this piece is truly a meditation on England rather than any western society with a modern, industrial culture, I’m not sure. Regardless, it is a smoke-signal to global audiences and, at times of crisis, we need more shows with this ambition.