Out of the Fire Theatre Company present Chopped Liver and Unions at the Space on the Mile in a tight, little black box space. It’s an engaging, well written 45 minutes focused upon a little known woman, Sara Wesker, a union activist from Spittlefield, in the 1920s/30s at a time when woman were always paid less than men because…well… because they were women.
Lottie Walker, an EastEnder themselves with a background in Variety is just the right person to present Sara’s life for us. Lottie embodies Sara with just the right accent, passion shining out of her eyes, breaking into a Union song or typing angrily and we leave wanting to know more as we aren’t given any resolution or narrative arc.
The hand-made union banners frame the action and bring us into Sara’s world. James Hall is on stage playing the keyboard, accompanying the action and that really helped the staging of this rather static play. In fact it made you want to hear more of the songs from the time but no doubt Fringe time constraints were a factor. It’s from the same team that produce ‘Marie Lloyd Stole my Life’ about a little known music hall star and I’d recommend you check out that production too.
J J Leppink’s script is the real star, managing to reference events from the battle of Cable Street, to the Match Girls strike and Sara’s personal life with deftness and lyricism. The Yiddish slang and East end culture of the time is embedded without any tokenism. There’s a lovely reference to the playwright Arnold Wesker who was Sara’s nephew and the title of Chopped Liver and Unions is a clever homage to Wesker’s most famous play, ‘Chicken Soup with Barley’ the first of his working class trilogy, sadly fallen out of current flavour. Most people like to assume that his Aunty Sara is the firebrand depicted in these plays.
Give thanks for grass root, small theatre companies like ‘Out of the Fire’ who fight to bring new writing to the Fringe and open up our hidden, working class history. I felt like this short play was a taster for more to come. If there was any justice in the arts world, Chopped Liver and Unions ought to be developed, becoming a full length piece with more dynamic staging, more songs, and uncover more of this fascinating period of history.
