Chris Eldon Lee reviews “Shakers : Under New Management” which is at the New Vic in Newcastle Under Lyme until Saturday 29th October
Three actors, three bar stools and that’s it.
But it’s what you do with such meagre resources that counts. And for the past 50 years Hull Truck Theatre Company – and its more recent breakaway John Godber Company – have been working wonders merging genuine (fictionalised) life stories with physical theatre … and carving an epic reputation for themselves.
‘Shakers’ was created in the mid-80s, in the “Loads of Money” era of British Society. Now the original team of writer Jane Thornton and director John Godber have substantially updated it so it can sink its teeth into modern times. It’s so contemporary I hardly recognised any of the music … and one of the best jokes about the “Eat Out to Help Out” campaign is all the funnier on the day its instigator has been crowned Prime Minister.
What Sunak had not envisaged was the impact his scheme would have on the hard-pressed and understaffed waitress we meet in this play.
Jazmine Franks, Rebecca Tebbett and Yasmin Dawes portray three such waitresses … and transform themselves into the sad and dodgy customers they are obliged to tolerate. The play is largely a cavalcade of comedy sketches … woven into one night of cleverly observed life in a bar where the clients are generally pissed, and the sea-food pasta is highly dubious.
The girls banter relentlessly about their lot. Zero hours contracts. The desperate shortage of staff. The fact that ‘homemade dishes’ come on an overnight truck. The fact that the company won’t pay for taxis home and the possibility that the area manager will want them to start wearing skimpy costumes to boost undesirable trade. And if that doesn’t work, they might even be turned into a McDonalds.
Most of the customers are pretty undesirable already. With a tightly choreographed Linda Carter twirl, the waitresses become three frustrated teachers, three boorish businessmen telling awful jokes, cooing lovers, and three cocky footballers with evil smelling foot deodorant.
I would suggest that Thornton has clearly spent a lot of time as a cocktail bar wall flower, such is the apparent authenticity of the dialogue. There are some great one-liners. My favourite is about how ‘Furloughed’ must be something to do with farming….
The play really is a sequence of somewhat superficial, themed sketches. But together they paint a picture of the post-covid resentment of a population that’s been bottled-up for far too long, as seen from the perspective of working class women. “We’ve all been through the wringer”. “We’ve all struggled” and “No one wants to work anymore”.
It’s witty, lively and energetically acted by a fine team of three. The noughties update is the key to the success of “Shakers : Under New Management”; that and its solid foundation of eighties ground-breaking theatre.