Weaknesses scupper tale of gang wars

SCUTTLERS

Royal Exchange, Manchester, to March 7

VICTORIAN Manchester must have been an extraordinary and terrifying place; a city of rapidly expanding wealth for some and dirt-poor poverty for the majority, the latter crammed into bad housing close to their jobs in the mills.

In Ancoats, jealousies and almost tribal hatred abounded, between both Irish and Italian immigrants (as HOME’s “Angel Meadow” revealed last year) and even between people living on adjacent streets, which is Rona Munro’s scenario in “Scuttlers”.

Scuttlers - street gangs - invented feuds and animosities to try to find some sort of social hierarchy in which they could find respect or fear.

Munro gives us two gangs separated by a bridge; the Bengal (Street) Tigers and the Prussia Street Prussians. If members of either cross the bridge they forfeit their health, if not their life.

Into the pot Munro throws siblings separated by poverty, a new baby, girls as warriors, men as posturing morons, gang internal wars and children orphaned by violence, almost all of it pointless.

The parallels are made with modern gang culture and can be extended to warfare both ancient and modern, if you really must.

So far so good, but unfortunately what Munro lacks is a truly engaging story and strong characters.

Wils Wilson’s average direction doesn’t help either, serving mainly to point up the relative thinness of the plot (in which, basically, gangs square-off against each other and there are innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders).

Any director who turns to this much general milling about by the large cast and 30 or so extras clearly doesn’t have much to work with.

This is rather disappointing, because in most respects the show has a lot going for it, not least a simple stage on which rain falls and a cotton loom hangs like a chandelier over everyone’s head.

The music, too, is unusual and strong (Denis Jones), a mix of industrial sounds and loud, repetitive electronica that nonetheless fits.

And the show isn’t without strong performances — indeed the evening features two performers from two of last year’s acclaimed shows: Dan Parr from the Exchange’s “Britannia Waves the Rules” and ironically Catriona Ennis, brilliantly edgy in the aforementioned “Angel Meadow” - which, it has to be said, told a similar story with a much more palpable sense of fear and poverty.