Summary
Fast Labour is inspired by the true story of Viktor Solomka, a Ukrainian who came to Britain penniless and within four years forged an empire of workers from the former Soviet Union to feed the British food industry's insatiable appetite for cheap labour. The aesthetic of Ibsen and Chekhov, with its nostalgia for bourgeois living rooms, heavy furniture and plates of macaroons, has been out of favour; Ibsen's morally charged narratives and taste for tragedy are hardly the best model for plays about modern life, which we are told is so slippery, so mediated, so impervious to the old forms.
See the full content of this document
Extract
Keeping It Real
I am sitting in the rehearsal room of West Yorkshire Playhouse, watching the space fill with props and furniture. Actors bring on spades, cups of tea and bowls of borscht. What has happened? Have I turned into a naturalist dramatist, a propagator...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
