By Gary Murray
“History is made by the women you push too far.”
Sara Wesker was one of those women and she is brought to life in this Blue Fire Theatre production, which takes this position as its starting point.
You may recognise the name Wesker. Sara was the aunt of famous playwright Arnold Wesker, renowned for his portrayals of socialist, working class life. The character of Sarah Khan in his play Chicken Soup With Barley was based on his aunt.
But you may not know her story, told in this play at the Grove Theatre in Eastbourne on Friday (March 14).
She grew up in a close-knit Jewish community in the East End of London and was a trade union activist her whole life.
Notably, Sara helped lead several strikes of garment factory workers, not least because the male workers were getting more in wages than the women for doing the same jobs.
Failing to get the strikes recognised by male-dominated unions (and therefore no strike pay), the women wrote their own lyrics to popular songs of the day to express their grievances, and sold books of the songs to raise money to support themselves during the strikes. They became known as the ‘Singing Strikers’.
The play is written as a monologue as Sara tells us how her background made her the person she was; the strikes and the constant tension of being a strong, politically active woman among male-dominated unions and political parties.
Sara is played engagingly by Lottie Walker, with a natural warmth. She talks movingly of how she loved Mick Mindel, a fellow trade unionist eight years her junior. But he married someone else and she never got over it, throwing herself into the causes that became central to her life.
This is where the play, strong as it is, could do with a little more light and shade.
The impact on Sara and her comrades in the Communist Party of Great Britain of the pact that the Soviet Union signed with Hitler in 1939 was devastating. Although told powerfully and movingly, more could have been made of this moment theatrically.
I’m thinking particularly of a moment from real life where Mick came home from a 12-hour shift to find Sara listening to the news of the pact on the radio, and the stomach-churning realisation of what this meant.
“This play goes a huge distance in telling Sara’s story, and deserves to be seen”
gary murray
In the same way, there’s a good evocation of the Battle of Cable Street in which the people of the East End came out in force to stop a march by Oswald Moseley’s fascist Blackshirts in 1936. But what did it feel like to be there that day?
And the further crisis of confidence experienced by many members of the Communist Party at the invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union in 1956 (many left the party over it) is not really dealt with at all.
Sara is sometimes played a little too personably. At times I’d like to have seen a harder edge.
Still, it’s important that Sara’s story is told. This play with songs goes a huge distance in achieving that and deserves to be seen.
:: The reviewer paid for his own ticket
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