Patch Plays is dedicated to staging productions with animal ethics and the environment at their root, hence Grace Joy Howarth’s Blood On Your Hands being set in a slaughterhouse besieged by animal rights activists, writes Michael Holland.
It opens with a blur of movement where we see bloodied knives and Meat is Murder placards followed by quick-fire scenes showing us Kostyantyn(Shannon Smith) trying to make a life in the UK while his wife struggles with a child and twins on the way in a Ukraine with the Russians lurking at the border, and Dan (Phillip John Jones) breezing through life with only himself to look after.
Concise direction from Anastasia Bunce, Lucy Corley and Alex Kampfner meant a lot of the story was told quickly and silently through expressionism and symbolism to depict the horrors of war, of abattoir work, and sleeping on floors with strangers,
Kostyantyn was a vet in his own country, but not all qualifications travel well so he is living in cramped accommodation and working in the slaughterhouse with Dan who once had a girlfriend and still lives with his mum. An unlikely pairing but one that seems to work as they banter their way through each day.
Nina(Kateryna Hryhorenko) has an easy time of playing the downtrodden, stay-at-home wife while carrying one baby in her arms and two in her womb, as Eden (Liv Jekyll) has a right old time as she deftly goes from once being Dan’s girlfriend in a very carnivorous, take-away burger-driven relationship, before becoming a militant animal rights activist who pours blood over the industry’s employees and smashes up the killing machines, forcing management to close the factory for repairs and clean up operations, and not pay their zero-hour contract workers. Who is the baddie here?
Actually, the evil in the piece was made manifest in the form of Jordan El-Balawi playing the school bully and the ruthless boss. He had just the right face and attitude for those girls who like bad boys to fall for, but who the rest of us can see is just a nasty piece of work.
So, between these five people I was hoping they would make me feel guilty about the braised hearts I’d had for dinner and contemplate giving up meat. No. I was more concerned with why Kostyantyn had left his pregnant wife and child and pretended he had work as a vet here, then never rushed back to be with his family when the Russians invaded!
There was so much wordy overkill on the slaughterhouse environment it was hard to find it all believable. And Dan being driven to kill himself when he seems such a happy man was plain confusing. If anyone should have ended their life my money would have been on Kostyantyn, especially when the video backdrop showed Russians invading Ukraine.
Ultimately, the strong initial premise was diluted with too many other distracting worthy causes. In the end I didn’t know if it was about animal rights, turning vegan, racism, war or suicide.
And when you see there are over twenty people in the programme with a bio who never set a foot on stage like the five hard-working cast, and the script shoe-horns in every cause that the funders support, you start to think the money hasn’t been spent in the right place. Alas, Smith and Jones’ sterling work was overwhelmed with the worthiness and their stars were dimmed.
Southwark Playhouse Borough, The Little, 77-85 Newington Causeway, London, SE1 6BD until 3rd February. Times: Monday to Saturday at 8pm; Tuesday and Saturday matinees at 3.30pm. Admission: £10 – £18
Booking: 020 7407 0234 – https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
