Plays about the working class, primarily played to middle class audiences, needn’t be indulgent voyeurism – they can provide a clear wake-up call, says Lyn Gardner.
Coming out of Leo Butler’s big, compassionate and conscience-pricking Boy at the Almeida this week, I overheard somebody speculating on whether it qualified as “poverty porn”. It’s not the first time recently that I’ve heard people using that deeply unpleasant phrase in relation to theatre shows. A producer described Yen at the Royal Court as such to me, and both Whatonstage’s Matt Trueman and The Times’s Ann Treneman used the phrase in their reviews of the same play. In the Financial Times, Ian Shuttleworth voiced his uneasiness about seeing Yen in prosperous Chelsea, saying: “This is the second time in barely six months that the Upstairs space has told us, however skilfully, that man hands on misery to man, especially... Keep reading on The Guardian
Coming out of Leo Butler’s big, compassionate and conscience-pricking Boy at the Almeida this week, I overheard somebody speculating on whether it qualified as “poverty porn”. It’s not the first time recently that I’ve heard people using that deeply unpleasant phrase in relation to theatre shows. A producer described Yen at the Royal Court as such to me, and both Whatonstage’s Matt Trueman and The Times’s Ann Treneman used the phrase in their reviews of the same play. In the Financial Times, Ian Shuttleworth voiced his uneasiness about seeing Yen in prosperous Chelsea, saying: “This is the second time in barely six months that the Upstairs space has told us, however skilfully, that man hands on misery to man, especially... Keep reading on The Guardian