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These are snippets from Reviews of Paul's second appearance on the London stage, in Mrs Steinberg And The Byker Boy. If you have subscribed to our Greeny club, you can get the full text of these reviews on the Greeny Mrs Steinberg And The Byker Boy Reviews page
From each according to their profit margins to each according to their sexuality, is the message behind Michael Wilcox's sexually bold but politically shy comedy.
The setting is the shabby "Red Flag" charity shop in Northshields, ploughing tiny amounts of cash into socialist causes. Run by an elderly Jewish Pole, Mrs Steinberg, her two ageing volunteers, April and Janice, have had their fingers in the till for years. Then along comes work experience whizz-kid Matty (Paul Nicholls), who is already on shag-first-ask-questions-later terms with the shop's other volunteer, pouting Peter. Mrs Steinberg visits relatives in Poland, leaving the shop in the hands of the foursome.Natasha Betteridge's production judges this tone well, giving the outrageous characters a free reign with their deep-blue dialogue - politely squeezing the more cerebral stuff in between. Miriam Karlin's Mrs Steinberg enfuses the play with a dignified presence as the old-time socialist and keeper of the play's didacticism. But Gay Soper and Jane Wood as April and Janice embrace their sexual candour with brazen enthusiasm.
Meanwhile with Paul Nicholls and Aidan Meech readily tonguing each other's tonsils, Wilcox sets the libidinal tone and gets himself off his play's political hook.
Reviewer's Rating:
(Good)
Michael Wilcox's new comedy is transparently a dramatisation of a specific debate: should socialism seek to prosper by capitalist means? Left and right are incarnated in its opposing protagonists: Mrs Steinberg runs the Red Flag charity shop and represents lefty altruism; while she's on holiday, the Byker boy, Matty, streamlines her 'business'('the New Red Flag'!') according to market principles.
Because of the play's Before and After structure, there are passages - mostly in the first act - that lack narrative drive. Natasha Betteridge's jaunty production renders them perfectly bearable and usually bawdy, as Matty and boyfriend Peter molest one another among the ragbags and volunteers Janice and April swap stories about sex and swindling the accounts. The star of a very well performed show is Miriam Karlin as the cantankerous Mrs Steinberg, a lethal deployer of the unanswerable put-down ('Don't patronise me, you randy catamite!') but able poignantly to suggest a life dedicated to impalpable, and possibly lost, causes. Wilcox's brisk and enjoyable piece strongly summons the sense that a charity shop's social and political worth can't be reduced to 'percentages, bonuses, international credit sales', in Mrs Steinberg's derisive words.
Michael Wilcox's latest play whiles away a happy couple of hours. But it's not funny enough to be totally entertaining, not sharp enough to count as satire and is too insubstantial to really pass comment on the ethics of making and spending money, and the difficulties of being a socialist in the New Labour, e-commerce world.
... young Matty arrives on work experience. He has never heard of Marx and in Mrs Steinberg's five-week absence sees an opportunity to transform the rundown charity shop into a thriving, profits-motivated business whose heart is in the basement where the computer gives internet access to an international market of buyers. For the rechristened New Red Flag shop and its volunteers with their profits-related bonus schemes, it's a case of rags to riches, almost overnight.
The clash between old-style socialist values and New Labour entrepreneurship is never given more than cursory attention, and the main enjoyment of the evening comes from the soap opera-like developments in the workers' personal lives, from Janice's "shag of a lifetime" to the burgeoning relationship between Matty and Peter. But like so much else in this play it is not sufficiently developed.
This is so close to being a much better play that it seems a pity the Bush hasn't helped to push the promising script that further mile. But there are no problems with Natasha Betteridge's snappy production or the performances, particularly from relative newcomers Paul Nicholls, who plays Matty with a sly, knowing smile, and Aidan Meech, whose Peter is like a lovable, trusting puppy who will always end up kicked.
Reviewer's Rating:
The doughty members of the Women's Institute were not the only ones to express their disappointment with Tony Blair last week. The day after the Prime Minister had been handbagged by the WI and left looking shakier than the Millennium Bridge, Michael Wilcox's new play opened which questions Blair's Third Way regime.
Unlike Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali's deliberately topical and reactive Ugly Rumours and Snogging Ken, Wilcox's comedy Mrs Steinberg and the Byker Boy doesn't set out to satirise New Labour and its personalities.Upon her return from holiday, Mrs Steinberg ("I'm not as Stalinist as I used to be, however, I am in charge") finds her principled emporium has had a makeover.
Keen to improve image and profit, Matty has rebranded the shop New Red Flag, stripped the basement of peeling posters of Marx and Lenin, and turned it into a sleek, business-like environment.
Built around this inevitable clash between principles and profits, Wilcox's play offers few surprises but does aim to entertain rather than proselytise. He offers plenty of earthy humour and invective which is well-served by Natasha Betteridge's buoyant cast.
As Janice and April, one with an eye on the main chance, the other preferring to have her hand in the till rather than on the tiller, Jane Wood and Gay Soper make an enjoyably bitchy couple. Aidan Meech is excellent as the vulnerable and impressionable Peter whose warmth is in sharp contrast to Paul Nicholls's coldly charming and bullying Matty.
Representing the old guard is Miriam Karlin's Mrs Steinberg. Though physically frail, Karlin displays a laconic humour regarding her ideals and the indomitable spirit that has made her character a survivor. Like the play, she makes her points simply, effectively and, for the most part, entertainingly.
Old Mrs Steinberg's Red Flag Charity Shop in Newcastle is on it's last legs, rather like the Communist Party to which she still proudly claims membership. (Ooh, I think I feel a parallel coming on.)
Then YTS trainee Matty (Paul Nicholls) from nearby Byker arrives and while Mrs S is away on holiday, he gets a computer, streamlines the business and renames the enterprise the New Red Flag. (Ooh! sort of like the Labour Party!) Trouble ensues.Michael Wilcox's play does sometimes rise above the heavy symbolism mentioned. And the fact that Miriam Karlin is riveting as the wily, wise Mrs Steinberg and is matched by a strong performance from Nicholls certainly helps.
The sub-plot, however, in which Matty has sex with Peter, another volunteer, but won't admit he's gay, is an inferior copy of Beautiful Thing (right down to the abusive father) and smells pretty stale. Also much of the humour relies on working-class women insulting each other and feels like old gay stuff that should have disappeared years ago.
Reviewer's Rating:
The Red Flag charity shop run by the staunch Communist Mrs Steinberg (Miriam Karlin) stumbles along supporting its 'socialist' causes until Matty (Paul Nicholls--Joe from Eastenders to most of us), the youth trainee turns up. In Mrs Steinberg's absence he transforms the shop into 'New Red Flag'--a fiercely competitive web-wise business flogging rarities to the highest bidder.
Apart from the obvious sideswipes at New Labour and privatisation, there is a satirical comment on the state capitalist regimes of Eastern Europe and the capitalist economies which replaced them which is critical of both. Mrs Steinberg states that she's 'a little less Stalinist than she used to be, and perhaps those 10,000 pencils to Cuba were a mistake'.
Underneath the humour is an attempt to explore questions concerning the family and sexuality. The two young trainees' homosexual relationship, refreshingly, is physically portrayed rather than just alluded to, and is counterposed against the two older women's lascivious discussions about 'stupendous shags'. The violence of the system is reflected by the way in which Matty is beaten by his father for his homosexuality, and how Matty, as he becomes more caught up in the competition of the system, turns his anger on those around him when challenged.
It's a warm and funny play which only occasionally resorts to stereotypes, with strong performances by both Nicholls and Karlin. If you've ever used 1917 as your cashcard pin number or tried to buy a rare record in a charity shop, go and see it.
The shock value of Mrs Steinberg & The Byker Boy written by Michael Willcox is not the colourful, colloquial language or the intimate sexual references but the fact that someone in this country still considers it worthwhile to contemplate the worthiness of a left-wing cause.
The action revolves around the Red Flag charity shop in the Newcastle, run by hard-line idealist Mrs Steinberg, whose fame has been established locally because of her Communist Party membership card.
Yellowing & decomposing images of Marx and Lenin overlook the charity shop basement filled with detriment of other lives that support distant causes of a regime on its last legs.
The fate of Mrs Steinberg's operation also seems to be heading the same way. Even her beliefs are changing as she professes a dislike of Lenin and a disillusionment with the pilfering ways of staff members, Janice and April who believe charity begins at home. And why not with their benefit-controlled working class existence?
Pondering the future for the Red Flag Mrs Steinberg goes off on a cheery trip to visit the graves of her relatives in Poland. Enter Matty (Paul Nicholls) the rough and tumble, streetwise bright gay YTS trainee takes the stage and rapidly transforms the charity shop into a profit-swilling enterprise that would make Richard Branson blush. Willcox cleverly creates a microcosm that contrasts left and right wing ideals but doesn't really offer an opinion, which doesn't actually seem necessary at all.
Janice and April, played by Jane Wood and Gay Soper, seem typical of the "characters" that you might find in this environment. Cheeky, honest in some ways, up for a laugh and full of witty repartee. They are the most genuine element of the play. Stereotypical in some ways, but not at all superfluous or caricature-like which is another credit to the director Natasha Betteridge and Willcox, and of course, the actors. Janice & April seem to provide a lot of the laughs and entertainment value.
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