Beyond the international headlines in today’s newspapers, you’ll find a story about London’s housing crisis reaching a new milestone, with no London borough having rooms to rent below £750 a month. The inability for working class, or even middle class, Londoners to get on the housing ladder is another symptom of the widening socio-economic gap right across the UK. Things were much the same in 1889, as we are reminded in James Fritz’s new play, The Flea, which is now playing at The Yard Theatre.
The story is based on real life events, though we’re warned at the beginning that some of what we’ll see definitely didn’t happen. In the last decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, homosexuality was illegal (and wasn’t decriminalised until 14 years into the reign of her great-great-grandaughter) and those caught breaking the law faced severe penalties, including five-years of hard labour.
London was shocked when a brothel was discovered on Cleveland Street in upmarket Fitzrovia, staffed by rent boys who worked during the day for the post office delivering telegrams. Even more surprising were some of the rumoured clientele of the establishment, which included the grandson of Queen Victoria and second in line to the throne.
Fritz takes all the key players and weaves them into The Flea, embellishing where necessary to create a sometimes absurdly funny play about a heartbreaking scenario. Our protagonist is Charlie Swinscow, the telegraph boy found with fourteen shillings in his pocket, and who was forced to confess he’d earned it by working as a prostitute.
The first act does a good job of establishing all the characters, there’s a lot of multi-rolling in The Flea and it occasionally gets confusing, but Fritz does do a fine job of building a compelling backstory for every character. Lambdog1066’s flamboyant, regency style with a modern twist, costumes also help differentiate the characters.
After the interval it becomes more of a detective story with Abberline (Scott Karim) and PC Hanks (Sonny Poon Tip) determined to get to the bottom of things, only to be met by a cover up instigated at the highest levels of British society. It’s here that the play really comes into it’s own, skewering the hypocritical upper classes in Blackadder-esque fashion with Norah Lopez Holden’s fabulous Queen Victoria being a fine example of this.
The final scenes drag slightly, despite director Jay Miller’s otherwise sprightly direction. The title takes inspiration from a Butterfly Effect type scenario, where it’s suggested Charlie would not have turned to prostitution had it not been for a flea nibbling on a rat’s back. It’s an interesting concept, and one which makes the audience think more carefully about where their sympathies lie.
Séamus McLean Ross stands out with a fantastically nuanced portrayal of Charlie, while delighting the audience in the second act as Bertie, Prince of Wales. Had it not been for the programme it might not have been immediately obvious it was the same actor, and The Flea does excel with the multi-rolling concept; Connor Finch plays both the aristocratic Lord Somerset and the rent boy recruiter, Henry Newlove, and great care is taken to change not just costume, but also make-up with each transition.
The story of the Cleveland Street scandal is compelling enough that telling the story in a simple way would have been more than enough, but Fritz’s approach with The Flea, while drawn out in places, works because it allows us to look at things from different angles, and not just because of Naomi Kuyck-Cohen’s set of misshapen furniture.
Charlie Swinscow and his mother needed more money than they actually had to keep a roof over their heads, whether it was a flea, or bigger societal issues that caused him to turn to prostitution, their story feels entirely relatable. Ultimately, The Flea tells a story from the past to highlight modern day injustices and does so in a unique piece of satirical Queer Victoriana.
The Flea is at Yard Theatre until 18th November 2023.
