A sing-along with the English Protection Army

Albion

Image by Bush Theatre

The young woman in the next seat loved the music. She rocked and swayed and sang alone with every song in Albion. I tapped happily but gently in my own more restrained way, but in truth by the second half I tired of the non-stop pop.

Initially it’s a brilliant shock tactic. Albion is about the small right-wing English Protection Army, set in a pub where it’s almost always karaoke night and the music blares out from all the mic'd-up characters.

Loud rhythmic sing-along pop music gives the piece a driving force and sometimes a song hits the spot, slotting unerringly into the moment.  The hits are integrated into the story, too, because party leader Paul Shepherd is the landlord and his tag-along gay brother, Jayson, reckons he’s the karaoke king while his Asian lover Aashir has never tried it.

What’s more, the devil not only has the best tunes he also has the best words.  Paul, supported by his Afro-Caribbean deputy, Kyle (you see – the EPA is inclusive), is aggrieved and quick to anger, but he also has the best arguments.

So the set-up looks good. Ok, the white-brown gay relationship is not new – Hanif Kureishi played with it ground-breakingly and brilliantly in the 1960s with My Beautiful Laundrette. But the karaoke is novel and so is the space given to the voices of nationalistic, working class people.

Where those voices exist in the theatre, it’s usually so they can be knocked down. Here it’s liberal flim-flam that is offered up in order to be mocked. "The lack of a liberal filter on the play was an early decision and one that has held through development," Bush Association Dramaturg Rob Drummer has said, "meaning at times the play directly addresses uncomfortable realities and stages the far right in a provocative way." 

In the second half, however, the appeal of the music palls and the play fractures, heading in several different directions simultaneously - despite the arrival centre-stage of Christine, a social worker scapegoated for failure to stop Muslim men’s abuse of White girls who is converted to the EPA cause and finally, being far more savvy and organised than the hapless men around her, takes off on her own meteoric political career.

Various political and personal struggles are played out: Kyle’s bid to take over the party; Jayson’s relationship with Aashir; the killing while on service abroad of Paul and Kyle’s soldier sister, who is also Kyle’s girlfriend; the clash between the need to keep the party’s rough-and-tumble elements happy with the need for a leadership makeover to avoid frightening the horses. Gradually, the play’s interesting political position is swamped by the personal plotting. Author Chris Thompson, a former social worker, is talented but he can’t quite keep control of the characters or the mood – or, in the end, the karaoke.

+ Albion is at The Bush Theatre, 7 Uxbridge Road, W12 8LJ, until  25 October. Info: 8749 5050/ http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk