The Big Society has its first theatrical talisman in Vivienne Franzmann’s Mogadishu and – here’s the kicker – it hasn’t a single solution to offer.
Salem comes to the schoolyard of a London comprehensive, when a bullying black, male pupil pushes an upstanding white, female teacher. Rather than apologising or admitting his error, however, Jason Chambers (Malachi Kirby) co-opts his peers into a single lie: that she racially abused and pushed him first. With five further testimonies against her, Amanda’s policy of absolute appeasement leads her first into suspension and later into criminal charges.
Rather than seeing a born bully, she sees “a boy with issues,” repeatedly trotting out statistics about disadvantaged Afro-Carribean children. She’s vilified for stubbornly believing in the potential for decentness and rehabilitation through education. Jason, meanwhile, fixedly sticks to his story as its consequences escalate. Her headteacher proves ineffectual, bound as he is by procedure and bureaucracy, and thus, lefty lunacy gets its comeuppance.
Essentially, Franzmann makes a cocktail of several major mob-mentality pieces. In its obstinate group testimony set against the innocent, it’s The Crucible – surely it’s no coincidence that the drama teacher is called Sue McCarthy. In the escalation of a lie that gains its own momentum, it echoes Dennis Kelly’s DNA and in its children making their own rules, it borrows – almost exactly – the dynamics of Lord of the Flies. Jason is your Jack; young Turkish victim Firat, your Piggy; thick and thuggish Chuggs, your Roger; and Becky – Amanda’s daughter and the only one willing to stand up to them – functions increasingly like Ralph.
While one has to admire a narrative of such scope, especially when it retains credibility in its plotting, Franzmann sacrifices ambiguity to achieve it. Though its ethical issues are, as Amanda categorically states, “not all black and white,” Mogadishu often seems precisely that. It’s as if the TiE department has been granted a stay on the main stage. You almost expect the action to stop while a workshop leader with a microphone steps in to ask: “Now then, what do we think Jason should have done?”
Dramatically, it becomes more interesting in its second-half, as Franzmann goes searching for root causes and solutions. Society, she suggests, begins at home. It’s there that Jason withstands a barrage of criticism from his authoritarian (widowed) father, a security guard with the mantra, “What have I told you about that,” and Becky turns to self-harm to cope with imposed aspirations and past grief. Ultimately, it’s a parallel too far, however, leading to a too-tidy final showdown between goth and gangsta. What Franzmann, herself an ex-teacher, seems to want to conclude is that children are the responsibility of the family more than the school system. (There’s something unpalatable about Amanda’s eventual resignation after the accusations have dissipated, which almost goes so far as to suggest that working women betray their familial responsibilities.) Extrapolate to a wider picture of the nation and, lo and behold, you’re left with a portrait of localism and a hands-off state, otherwise known as the Big Society.
Of course, Franzmann is allowed her politics. What’s more problematic, however, is the way she muddles that message. She argues against positive discrimination on the basis of circumstances, both of nature and nurture, while – at the same time – pointing towards those circumstances as the root cause of behaviour and personality. For a play that seems advocate treating people as people rather than problems to be dealt with procedurally, Franzmann’s characters look awfully like symptom-bundles. Perhaps, all this is simply to attack the absence of family values, in which case surely the school/state ought to step in. The phrase “in loco parentis” crops up at least once. Perhaps it is to note that Amanda/the school/the state’s sympathetic, softly-softly approach –not to mention the difference of standards – is not equivalent to good parenting, which must punish as well as praise. Interestingly, Jason’s father looks, at first, like a good parent, when his discipline is set against the soft school approach, but proves just as problematic when we realise that its his only mode. Perhaps, Franzmann’s point is that its all rather complex and all this is too reductive.
Regardless of all this, I have problems with Mogadishu as a piece of theatre. Franzmann’s characters are as flat as pancakes. Around well-meaning but over-liberal Amanda are the strict disciplinarian father, the sympathetic step-father and the weak headmaster with the best of intentions and the worst of inaction. That’s just the adults. By the time we enter the school-yard, characters are classified according to their predicted grades. Only Jason and Becky have opportunity shows two sides. He is both stony playground pack-leader and victimised son; she is Juno-esque Indie and surly self-harmer.
Beyond that, I’m not sure that Mogadishu really earns its title, which paints the school system in the light of the Somalian civil war. Perhaps if it were a little more distilled, losing the in-jokes and chat that can be very funny, but punctures the tension and momentum of the issue in hand.
None of this, however, is the fault of Matthew Dunster’s production which rattles along on Tom Scutt’s cracking design, a rusty fence that suggests cage-fighting, holding-pens and tetanus. There are lively performances, even if few reach beyond the limits of one-dimensional characters. Julia Ford manages to find sympathy for Amanda’s frustrations without excusing her approach and Fraser James is brilliantly stern and unmoving with his fearsome father, Chris. Of the teenagers, Shannon Tarbet is outstanding as Becky and Malachi Kirby draws the distinction between timidity and intimidation. It’s newcomer Hammed Animashaun as Jordan, a likeable joker with a good head on his shoulder’s, who steals the night, brilliantly letting us into the playground jokes as he rises above it’s trivial troubles with a perfect mix of humour and incredulity.
Photograph: Jonathan Keenan
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