Thursday 11 March 2010
Meeting Joe Strummer: When Two Classes Clashed The Future Was Unwritten @ Komedia
When Jason Pitt blunders his way through a part of Hamlet making it sound very ordinary, and then quotes from the Clash track Clampdown making it sound better than Shakespeare, he captures the essence of this production; its humour, its pathos and its integrity.
In this way Meeting Joe Strummer (Komedia, Wednesday 11th March) by The Future Is Unwritten seems to mirror (in form and content) exactly the man and his values that it seeks to portray.
Not that this is a Strummer biopic, instead it follows the fortunes and lives of two of his greatest fans and their relationships with society, Socialism, each other and the great man himself.
We hurtle around the latter half of the twentieth century as the two men meet up, form an awful band, fall out and then meet again. Chronology is abused carefully in order to emphasis themes and ideas.
For this is the kind of play that it is, one that builds on its main characters to explore those themes and ideas and compare how they change over time. No props, no video spectaculars, just great writing and great delivery.
This is the kind of production that could have screwed up badly, either by getting all wet in the corners of its eyes in overblown romanticism, or by being a humourless critique.
Instead writer Paul Hodson, with actors Steve North and Jason Pitt, has managed to create something really worth listening to (the actors' own self deprecating sense of humour helps smooth out any bumps there might be in this production).
Plus their own built-in 'Bullshit Detectors' ensure a work of integrity and power that deserved a sell out crowd in Brighton that it did not actually quite get – Shame on you Brightonians!
We never meet Joe Strummer in the play but we know he is there, in the same way as he is there every time you play White Man in Hammersmith Palais.
Above all, it seems, the future is unwritten.
If you have met Joe Strummer a new documentary is being put together by Paul Hodson (who directed this play).
He would like anyone who has met Strummer or who can knock out a Clash tune however badly to e-mail madintertia@me.com with contact details and brief description.
by: Howard Young (Arts Editor)
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Steve North With A Strummer On His Shoulder
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