It was thanks to Film
Producer / Director Barry Ryan [Free@LastTV]
and bestselling crime author Martina Cole of Two
Queens Productions that I found myself at Stratford East’s Theatre Royal last
week. I had been invited to view Patrick Pryor’s adaption of Martina
Cole’s debut novel, the 1992 London Gangster saga that is ‘Dangerous Lady’.
This was a risky venture for the playwright and the team he assembled at the
East End’s renowned theatre in Stratford Stratford
team had to overcome is the knowledge that Dangerous Lady, was the novel that
20 years ago transformed single mother Martina Cole into one of the UK
Martina was recently
interviewed regarding the theatrical production of her debut novel -
The production of Dangerous
Lady follows plot of Martina’s debut novel faithfully, but is [by necessity] a
distillation of this dark cautionary tale. The theme is the allegiances and
betrayal in a blue collar criminal family, set against the relationships
between the corruption with the police and societies upper echelons. The
process of paring down the narrative is done with the precision of surgeon’s
scalpel as the play loses none of the novel’s grit, nor humor, an essential
aspect of the narrative to keep this dark tale from tipping over the edge;
because there is some real darkness below the surface of this tale of family
moralities and the 1960’s London Underworld. It opens with the birth of Maura
Ryan to Irish Matriarch Sarah Ryan. Maura, being Sarah’s only daughter to her sons
Michael, Geoffrey and Anthony Ryan. When their father leaves Sarah and his
brood penniless in post-war London; elder brother Michael Ryan takes it upon
himself to provide for the family, but from the illegal black-market side of
1960’s London, building up a ruthless criminal network of vicious protection
rackets, prostitution, strip-bars, drugs and petty [and not so] petty crime.
Matriarch and firm Irish Catholic, Sarah Ryan tries to get the church involved
in trying to put Michael and the brothers back into the law-abiding side of the
street, only to find the local priest is a conduit for the IRA [and with an
agenda that Michael Ryan can help with]. As wonderful as the cast are, some
playing multiple roles, the real star of the show is the stage and production.
We have extraordinary lighting, smoke, rear projections of the club-land’s neon
strip-lighting, and the plate glass friezes of church-windows and evocative
music that just makes the proceedings flow like wine down a thirsty gullet. The
two-tier, moving-tracked stage is marvelous to watch as it allows the play to
flow through the audience like deadly vignettes, that cut through the density
of the narrative, distilling it to the core, without losing the richness and
depth of the novel. The first act, closes on the pivotal scene that marks Maura
Ryan’s future, and illustrates the moral corruption that religion can cast over
people when used to forward an agenda. This scene is as graphic as I've seen in
the theater and though truly horrific to watch, such is the intensity in which
it is offered to the audience who see the proceedings right in their faces. One
can never state that it is a gratuitous scene, nor one that is titillating, far
from it. This scene is as hypnotic as it is essential for the narrative - as
this last scene, before the intermission is the key that turns in Maura Ryan’s
lock transforming her from a sweet, naive young girl into something more akin
to a hybrid of Tony Montana [‘Scarface’] and Larsson’s troubled protagonist - Lisabeth
Salander.
The second act relays the
journey that Maura and her family traverse as she takes on the mantle of the
family crime business, standing side by side with her older brother Michael
Ryan. Naturally the shadow this casts over younger brothers Geoffrey and
Anthony will have deadly consequences for Maura as well as her beloved Michael,
as well as her relationship with her mother, the increasingly unhinged Sarah
Ryan.
I did wonder how a
theatrical production would tackle the tense bullion robbery that Cole placed
at the centre of her novel; but I needn’t have fretted, as I was totally blown
away by the way they managed to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. Loud
staccato gunfire, light flashes and sirens tore through the theatre as the
bullion raid was recreated to nerve-shredding effect. I found myself ducking
for cover several times to ensure I was not hit by stray gun-fire that seemed
to strafe the audience.
Then as the play reaches its
climax, we see the consequences that Maura and the Ryan family face from the
law, as well as the IRA, all due to the choices they have made, many of which
they had little control over. There is a dark morality woven into the play, the
self-same theme that the novel of Dangerous Lady carries as a striated motif –
violence and evil often create their own violence and evil, cancelling out the
original deeds in a form of equalization. Though there is much darkness in the
proceedings, I was delighted to see some of the best and wittiest ‘one-liners’
from Martina’s debut make it onto the stage in East London .
It is the suffusion of gallows humour, mainly via extraordinary dialogue that
balances out, and makes the scary and visceral aspects bearable. The whole play
zips by as fast as the gunfire that echoes in the auditorium. In fact the two
acts of Dangerous Lady, move so fast, that one scarcely feels the movement of
time, though the team from Stratford
One aspect that is rarely
mentioned about Martina Cole and her work, is how much compassion there is in
her stories, something that is not lost in this theatrical adaptation; like her
refusal to be judgmental about the myriad aspects that make up human nature.
Though she rarely talks about it, I would like to point out that Cole supports
many charities as well being a patron of the arts. It was over a
decade ago that I discovered that she works with women in prison
[especially the desperate mothers] from Africa and South
America coerced into being ‘drug mules’ to support their families,
now incarcerated in British Jails. Whenever I ask her about this, she always
changes the subject and blushes. Personally I am amused and perplexed by the
dichotomy in the response to Martina’s work, because she is second only to J K
Rowling in terms of sales in the UK
I was delighted to see her
literary agent, the legendary Darley
Anderson [who discovered Cole’s talent] as well as Jane Morpeth Managing
Director of Headline Publishing in attendance, and together we all managed
to have a drink with Martina, during the intermission. We raised our glasses
and passed a toast to the versatile and prolific actor Herbert Lom who passed
away recently, and reminisced at how a decade ago
we managed to talk to him, and get a photo taken with him at one of the Crimescene
London Film and Literature Festivals managed by Maxim
Jakubowski and Adrian Wooten at The National Film Theatre. One thing I
admire about Martina Cole is her unpretentious approach to crime writing,
and how despite the fame and profile she has attained; she remains the same
woman I met so many years ago. She also epitomizes an observation I have found
in my many years of interviewing and reviewing the writers that make up the
darkest edges of the genre. The darker the imagination, the more generous and
amusing, as well as modest [and grounded] is the writer, in my experience.
Dangerous Lady runs until
Saturday 17th November, and we’d
urge you to make time for a visit, because it is a spectacular production,
and one that will make you ‘think’. If you’ve not read Martina Cole, then ‘The
Life’ is a good place to start, as her work reveals what lurks beneath the
veneer that we call ‘society’; one that we only glimpse when we walk away,
often to the muffled echo of gunshots, or a scream from behind us. Cole writes
about the world that many of us pretend does not exist, but one that lurks a
few microns below our own reality.
For more information on tickets
click here and to uncover more
about the world of Martina Cole click here
Photos (c) 2002 - 2012 Ali Karim of Stratford East Theatre Royal, Herbert Lom, Martina Cole, Darley Anderson and Jane Morpeth of Headline Publishing
No comments:
Post a Comment