The steel town of Workington in West Cumbria helped create the wealth of Britain, the railways, the homes and the businesses. The work was dangerous and not brilliantly paid, but workers collectively fought for basic standards. Unfortunately, the wealthy didn’t like unions and could find cheaper steel from places where union standards were lower. Never mind that transporting it across great distances spews more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; it made the wealthy richer.
Steel, coal and cotton production across the country in the eighties and nineties was increasingly ended, devastating communities of any means of work or future. They were then forgotten by the wealthy and often by the storytellers of the theatre.
Lee Mattinson’s play conjures up a magic realist story triggered by the prospect of a million pounds being offered for the sale of a contract that proved James one of their number inherited a mile of steel rail-tracks.
The story, which centres on the two seventeen-year-old friends James and Kamran searching for the document, touches on issues of deprivation, racism and gay rights. With a deadline to find the document, their journey takes them across a town, drinking and socialising in a traditional end-of-the-week Mad Friday, to the homes of relatives, eight pubs and a hotel room. They are looking for a relative who might know where the document is. Their conversations with each other will occasionally tentatively touch on an evening in the past when James and Kamran became, for a few hours, more than just good friends. James will also learn something more about why his mum and dad broke up, leaving James in the custody of his dad.
News of this steel money begins to channel some of the local discontents. James's dad, Marc, describes the horror of the steel mills and of one night seeing seven co-workers killed. He argues it is “blood money” which belongs to the workers. His views are echoed by Ted, a former trade union leader speaking to a pub gathering, recalling “long cold winters with shivering empty stomachs.” Standing at a microphone, Ted says, “this is for everyone who has ever called this home. Folk forged from the sparks of those yards. For we know what it is to be forced to our knees, but today we stood and tonight we rise.”
As James and Kamran walk to another pub hoping to find James's cousin, they pass “Navies Bridge by the Derwent”, spotting ten lads “dancing under a piss-soaked bridge.” In another pub, they witness lads turning on a kid who danced to Rihanna, calling him a puff.
The eighth pub is a bit different. Someone James recognises tells him it's “centuries old and home to those the town spits out. It’s a lighthouse.” It is the place where gay people feel safe to be themselves.
There is a bleak atmospheric mood to much of the play, edged with moments of hope and community. Jordan Tweddle as James and Suraj Shah as Kamran give fine performances, their dialogue having the poetic rhythm of people who know each other well.
However, the multiple locations of the story, along with Suraj having to play ten parts, mean audience members can lose track of what is happening. Perhaps a third actor performing most of the nine parts would make the show easier to follow.
Written by Lee Mattinson, who grew up in Workington, the play, at times very movingly, bears witness to the destructive impact of Britain’s deindustrialisation in the interests of profit. The show ends with the gentle voices of the Steel Community Choir.