News

What to see: Lyn Gardner's theatre tips

Guardian Theatre Blog - 5 hours 7 min ago

It's a big week for Romeo and Juliet, while the National Review of Live Art celebrates its 30th anniversary

The National Review of Live Art is 30 years young this year and is celebrating in style from Wednesday at the Arches in Glasgow. There's too much good stuff to list in full but do check out the website. I'll be heading north on Thursday and hope to catch Curious, Forkbeard Fantasy, Anne Seagrave, Geraldine Pilgrim and Ron Athey, among others.

If you can't get to Glasgow, you could catch Chris Goode's Who You Are at the Tate on Monday. Or you could skip down to the Nuffield in Southampton next Thursday or Friday, where Action Hero is performing A Western.

In Bristol, the shows are coming thick and fast. There's still a last chance to catch the wonderful Dream at the Tobacco Factory, or try local company Myrtle's Up Down Boy at the Brewery. The geriatric love story, Juliet and Her Romeo, opens at Bristol Old Vic on Tuesday. In fact, it's a big week for Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers, who can also be found at the RSC in Stratford and in a version by Oddsocks at the Arts in London.

Cider With Rosie goes out on tour from the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds; Stephanie Street's play about Muslim women, Sisters, opens at the Crucible studio in Sheffield; and Theatre Alibi's adaption of Graham Greene's The Ministry of Fear is at the Oxford Playhouse. Journey's End stops off at South Hill Park in Bracknell. David Edgar's stage version of Julian Barnes's Arthur and George is at the Birmingham Rep. The Chronicles of Long Kesh was a popular hit in Edinburgh this year and should pack out the Tricycle. The Curve is reviving Shelagh Stephenson's The Long Road, a play about forgiveness that packs a powerful punch. At the Library in Manchester, you can see David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. Jermyn Street revives Sondheim's Anyone Can Whistle. A reminder, too, that Showstopper! The Improvised Musical continues at the Drill Hall and really is good, clever fun.

Dennis Kelly's new play about corporate greed and state secrets, The Gods Weep, opens at Hampstead, but if that doesn't appeal there is always Enron at the Noel Coward. If you want something a bit different, try Money at Shunt or Wealth at a new venue, the Cable Street Studio. Tom Murphy's The Sanctuary Lamp is revived at the Arcola, and at Soho, Gambling counts the cost of betting. Penelope Skinner's Eigengrau opening on Monday at the Bush examines city life. The White Guard is in preview at the National.

Debbie Tucker Green's Random feels anything but as part of the Royal Court Theatre's local season at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. The Sprint festival continues, and I'd particularly pick out Under the Covers, which plays next Friday. Little Bulb's delightful Sporadical continues at BAC. Peter and Vandy at Theatre 503 is a charming love story with a non-linear narrative. Eurydice continues at the Drum in Plymouth before moving to the Traverse in Edinburgh, and there's a fine revival of My Name is Rachel Corrie at the Citizens in Glasgow – just as the story of the US teenager killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza is back in the news.

• West End
• Theatre

Lyn Gardner
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Noises off: Is theatre elitist?

Guardian Theatre Blog - 11 March, 2010 - 13:07

Theatre blogs are anxiously debating whether 'experimental' theatre turns off 'regular' people

If you're a playwright, who should you be writing for – yourself or other people? This debate began when Scott Walters noticed this post on the Poor Player blog, in which Tom Loughlin laments the fact that he has hit a period of artistic ennu: the theatre and art he sees around him have lost their appeal. The only thing that still holds his interest are "the people I meet who have absolutely nothing to do with theatre or academia," he writes. "The man doing my bathroom is a great guy and wonderful to talk to… I ate lunch yesterday with a complete stranger at a local diner and had an interesting conversation about next to nothing." He concludes: "I wish I knew how to create theatre for these people. I'm depressed that I don't. They deserve better."

For Walters, this sentiment goes to the core of what he thinks theatre should aim to do. We should, he says, be "trying to create theatre that has something to say to people who are just living life day to day. Not high-flying intellectuals, not artists, but just the folks who work the cash registers of our lives." He expands on this idea in another post where he analyses Naomi Wallace's The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, set during the Great Depression. This play, he says, engages in a kind of formal experimentation that can be hugely alienating to many people. He describes how one elderly couple who saw it "were left desperately trying to figure out what the hell happened. Instead of trusting the power of her story and the humanity of her characters, Wallace had turned her play into an elaborate puzzle." He goes on: "Wallace's play took the working class experience seriously, the small town experience seriously, but she couldn't write for them – she had to signal that, while she was on their side, she is still a member of the intelligentsia, the artist-specialist class."

This question of social class in theatre is a fraught one. After all, the average theatre audience in both the UK and US is overwhelmingly middle-class, thus raising all sorts of ethical and aesthetic questions about how one presents the lives of people on a different rung of the social ladder. As J Holtham asks in a guest post on the Parabasis blog: "Is there a difference between writing TO an audience, writing FOR an audience and writing ABOUT an audience?" It can be very tempting to agree with John McGrath, who suggests in his remarkable book A Good Night Out that if we are to dramatise the lives of working people on stage, then we should seek out theatrical forms with which those working people will most easily be able to connect.

Yet do we ever have the right to tell writers how they should or should not be writing? Matthew Freeman argues that we do not. His response to the arguments of Walters is simple: "Write your own plays." "There's no use scolding artists when their experiments don't connect with you," he writes. "They're going to experiment anyway. Those same experiments do connect with someone, I'll bet. Maybe not you all the time. Luckily, there are lots and lots of plays. Go read a different one." Walters, in a follow up post, acknowledges that the best solution is not to persuade existing writers to change, but to encourage those who have never written before to put pen to paper for the first time.

Of course, the experimental and the popular don't always have to be opposed. I leave you with this fascinating interview with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment and occasional diarist on this site, on the Art Review website, which marks Etchells's current exhibition at the Gasworks Gallery in London. Etchells's discussion of his project, Art Flavours, where he sought to forge a collaboration between the Italian academic and critic Roberto Pinto and the ice-cream maker Osvaldo Castellari is an excellent example of how high-brow experimentalism can be brought together with a quite literally tasty populism. Buon appetito.

• Theatre

Chris Wilkinson
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Costa's legacy: Human Rights and the UNODC

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 10 March, 2010 - 20:15

Before talking about far more important things going on at this years CND, briefly to this morning, when the NGO representatives had a particularly fractious meeting with the UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa. Instead of having a constructive dialogue with the NGOs representatives present, the Director prompted an audible gasp as he immediately lashed out, angrily accusing half of us of being 'pro-drug' (again) and not caring if we killed millions in poor countries. Inevitably several present felt bound to take him to task on these offensive, and frankly ridiculous comments, and depressingly familiar scenes ensued. All rather pointless. There may be other accounts of all this but I won't dwell on it now. Costa is stepping down in May and hopefully a more positive relationship will be possible with his successor. We should also remember that the UNODC is far more than just its figurehead.

More on the activities at CND today from IHRA HR2's day three report , and all the nerdy detail on the CNDblog

Despite Costa parting company with many in the NGO community on a rather sour personal note this morning, the UNODC under Costa has, in fact, seen some considerable improvements in some areas of its NGO engagement - even if often rather begrudging, and more often behind the scenes than at the big showpiece events like the CND, as we have seen.

We should give credit where due; this engagement has delivered some meaningful progress, the Beyond 2008 NGO meeting, for example, producing a potentially useful document (even if CND chose to completely ignore it). Perhaps the most significant development on this front has been the dramatically improved incorporation of human rights analysis from the NGO sector into the wider drug control discourse (for which IHRA's HR2 program and others including Human Rights Watch can take considerable plaudits). Costa, to his credit, has made a series of useful statements on human rights issues, notably on the death penalty.  

As he prepares to bow out he may well also look back at today's publication by the UNODC of new a discussion document, 'Drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice: a human rights perspective - Note by the Executive Director' , as one legacy for which he can be justifiably proud. It contains a level of sophistication in its analysis that has long been absent from the high level drug policy UN discourse. It is an authoritative document and one of potentially huge importance in the longer term. UN drug control, and international drug policy more generally has been uniquely divorced from much of the mainstream human rights analysis that flows through the very core of the wider UN family. This new document goes some way to correcting this historical anomaly  - at least on paper - covering a range of issues including:

• The nature of state human rights obligations within drug enforcement, 
• Issues of proportionality in sentencing
• The use of imprisonment and the death penalty for drug offenses, 
• Due process and treatment of drug offenders, 
• The right to health - including access to clean needles and substitute opiate prescribing for injectors (including in prisons)
• Personal rights regarding coerced treatment and testing 
• The right to provision of essential medicines
• Mainstreaming of human rights in international drug control, including - we were pleased to see  - a call for  a human rights impact assessment  to be used as a evaluative and developmental policy tool, as well as incorporating a human rights compliance assessment into the annual World Drugs Report, and provision of human rights training.

You will forgive the lengthy excerpts that follow, but this is material really worth highlighting. I fully recommend you read the complete report (which provides the context and the references for the quotes below, (that btw include my emphasis)). The body of the report is only 15 pages and by UN standards, its pretty accessible and free of heavy legalese/waffle.


from Para 2:

"The normative foundation of the United Nations’ work in the area of the rule of law work is the Charter and the body of international law, including international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international refugee law, and international human rights law. Responses to drugs, crime and terrorism that are based on the rule of law must therefore also incorporate human rights law and principles. Too often, law enforcement and criminal justice systems themselves perpetrate human rights abuses and exclude and marginalize from society those who most need treatment and rehabilitation"Para 3:

"Placing human rights at the centre of drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice provides an organizing set of principles that dissolves boundaries between the fields and promotes a single coherent response. Effective drug control cannot exist without fair criminal justice and successful crime prevention. Human rights offer guidance on the delicate balance between the protection of fundamental freedoms and the protection of public health, morals and security. It sets out the broad responsibilities of the State to respect, protect and fulfil the health and wellbeing of its peoples and specific due process guarantees, such as for those suspected or accused of a criminal offence."
 Para 4:

"Such an approach represents more than “added value”; it is a legal obligation. In the 2005 World Summit Outcome, Member States resolved that the promotion and protection of human rights should be both integrated into national policies and mainstreamed throughout the United Nations system. That the fight against drugs, crime and terrorism must conform to human rights is clear. The challenge is to understand how these policies may be pursued in a manner that not only respects and protects human rights, but also contributes towards their positive fulfilment."Para 8:

"These bodies of treaty law are interdependent and are intended to support elements of the same pillars of peace and security, development and human rights. Nonetheless, references to human rights within the crime, terrorism and drug-related treaties are sparse. This does not mean that human rights law has no application to drugs, crime and terrorism. Rather, where references to human rights do occur in the drug, crime and terrorism conventions, it is clear that the intention is to highlight that international human rights law must be fully respected in their implementation. This is consistent with the core Charter obligation to promote respect for, and observance of human rights."Para 9:

"No treaty, however special its subject-matter, applies in a normative vacuum, as both general international law (including customary international law) and particular concurrent international obligations affect its interpretation and application.The question of whether a particular criminal law is inconsistent with international human rights must be assessed on a right-by-right basis. One reason for this is that while some rights (such as freedom of expression, for example) may be limited on the grounds of public safety, order, health, morals and the rights and freedoms of others, other rights may not be limited under any circumstances."
from Para 15:

"In particular, the balance between State action and individual rights can be different when it comes to vulnerable groups. Indeed, human rights law can be said to have a particular focus on marginal groups, vulnerability, disadvantage and discrimination"

Para 17 (on children drugs and rights):

"With respect to children who use drugs and abuse alcohol, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child considers that the right of the child to protection demands that such children should be treated as victims and not as criminals. Indeed, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — as the only core United Nations human rights treaty to refer specifically to drug use — has a strong focus on protection rather than punishment."

Para 18 (on harm reduction):

"Similarly, as concerns persons vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, the International Guidelines on HIV and Human Rights emphasize that criminal law should not be an impediment to reducing the risk of HIV transmission among injecting drug users, or to provision of HIV-related care and treatment for injecting drug users. " In particular, Member States should consider the repeal of laws criminalizing the possession, distribution and dispensing of needles and syringes, in favour of the authorization or legalization and promotion of needle and syringe exchange programmes.

 from Para 21 (on proportionality)
"..the principle that the severity of penalties must not be disproportionate to the criminal offence is found in a wide body of human rights related standards. This principle includes the notions that imprisonment should be used as a penalty of last resort, and that the choice between penalties  should take into consideration the likelihood of the offender being rehabilitated"
Para 23 - (making a clear case from decrim of personal possession/use)

"In the context of drug laws and sentencing, the drug-control conventions generally require parties to establish a wide range of drug-related activities as criminal offences under their domestic law. Nonetheless, they permit parties to respond to them proportionally, including through alternatives to conviction or punishment for offences of a minor nature. Serious offences, such as trafficking in illicit drugs, must be dealt with more severely and extensively than offences such as possession of drugs for personal use. In this respect, it is clear that the use of non-custodial measures and treatment programmes for offences involving possession for personal use of drugs offer a more proportionate response and the more effective administration of justice. Moreover, the criminal justice response should not be considered proportionate if it results in the denial of another individual human right. Where imprisonment for possession/use offences precludes access to appropriate drug-dependence treatment, for example, this may constitute a denial of the right to the highest attainable standard of health or even the right to freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, rendering the criminal justice response de facto disproportionate."
Para 25/26 (making it clear the death penalty is illegal for any drug crime including trafficking):

"The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifies that in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, the sentence of death may be imposed only for the “most serious crimes”. The concept of “most serious crimes” is limited to those where it can be shown that there was an intention to kill which resulted in the loss of life. The weight of opinion indicates that drug offences (such as possession and trafficking) and those of a purely economic nature do not meet this threshold. Moreover, States that have abolished the death penalty are prohibited to extradite any person to another country where he or she might face capital punishment."
"Despite such prohibitions, a considerable number of the 47 retentionist States that continue to use capital punishment have carried out executions for drug offences in recent years. In some of these countries, drug offenders constitute a significant proportion of total executions As an entity  of the United Nations system, UNODC advocates the abolition of the death penalty and calls upon Member States to follow international standards concerning prohibition of the death penalty for offences of a drug-related or purely economic nature. Para 27:

Overall, while human rights law does not usually direct the content of criminal laws or penalties per se, it does demand strict scrutiny to ensure that laws do not deny the rights of individuals. In the case of drug laws in particular, obligations to establish offences under the international drug conventions must be fulfilled while at the same time respecting a range of rights, including the right to health, to the protection of the child, to private and family life, to non-discrimination, to the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. As noted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, drug laws frequently overemphasize criminalization and punishment while underemphasizing treatment and respect for human rights.
Para 41 (clarifying the right to health includes access to needle exchange and opiate substitution)

"Accordingly, the right to health calls for access to measures such as counselling, advice, clean needles and syringes, and drug dependence psychosocial and pharmacological treatment, including, where appropriate, opioid-agonists therapy (or long lasting opioid-agonists). Such requirements are fully compatible with those of the international drug control conventions. The International Narcotics Control Board notes that governments should adopt measures that may decrease the sharing of hypodermic needles among injecting users in order to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS.72 It is also of the view of the Board that the implementation of drug substitution and maintenance treatment does not constitute a breach of treaty provisions, whatever substance is used for such treatment in line with established national sound medical practice."

Para 59: (on human Rights Impact Assessments)

"UNODC will consider using, where appropriate, the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) as a predictive tool for assessing the potential human rights impact of a policy or programme, with the aim of informing decision makers and affected persons. By helping to identify the nature and extent of the potential impact, the HRIA facilitates the adjustment of the proposed policy, mitigating the negative and maximizing the positive human rights impacts. HRIA is a combined tool for risk assessment, civil society engagement and decision-making, geared towards ensuring, from the outset, that human rights are at the centre of all policy and programmes. This is a relatively new and developing area and not without its difficulties, but one which could be of significant value for UNODC as a mechanism to mainstream human rights and operationalize human rights commitments and responsibilities. To this end, the HRIA includes a wide range of activities intended to identify and  manage human rights risk and to evaluate humanrights impact, positive and negative, throughout the life of each project."Of course, This should all have been said years ago - and might have helped avert all manner of drugwar excess and horror if it had been. None the less, progress is progress and this is a useful foundational document for moving forward. So, well done Costa, thank you, and farewell.This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

Eliminate theatre critics at your peril | David Cote

Guardian Theatre Blog - 10 March, 2010 - 17:32

Cost-saving US publishers are ditching seasoned reviewers – and pitching criticism into incoherent chaos in the process

On Monday, the iconic industry trade paper Variety sacked chief film critic Todd McCarthy and chief theatre critic David Rooney. Cost-cutting, explained Neil Stiles, president of the publication; reviews will henceforth be farmed out to freelancers. New York's critical community was left aghast. Variety has effectively told the world that it doesn't care about having an authoritative critical voice. The implications are grave.

Anyone who read the writing on the wall wasn't terribly surprised. In recent years, New York theatre critics have been disappearing from the payrolls, replaced by a parade of jobbing freelancers with little experience and even littler clout. At the New York Observer, the respected John Heilpern retired, and the paper shows no signs of wanting to replace him with anyone of comparable talent. Two years ago, Jeremy McCarter left New York Magazine for Newsweek and his former employer seems content to use a rotating crew of interchangeable bylines. Termination, buyout, burnout: each year it seems that the number of seasoned, thoughtful critics is shrinking.

In both the short and long term, the trend is disturbing. From a strictly corporate view, however, it's expedient. The brand remains prominent, but the particular voice of the critic becomes negligible. Cynics might say this allows the editor to soften a negative review, or bury it online, so as not to alienate or annoy advertisers. Using writers with less power and prestige also allows a publication to bend the copy to advertorial ends.

You've seen the books speculating on what our cities would look like if humans vanished and nature were allowed to spread unchecked. Let's imagine a world without critics (please indulge my paranoid prognostication). In a few years, if this trend continues, only the stupidest among us will believe a critical rave. We'll know that reviews are just part of the marketing arm of a movie studio, theatre producer or TV programmer.

So we'll turn to the blogosphere, or those we follow on Twitter and other social networking sites, to find a consensus. But there will be no consensus, just a pullulating buzz of artists promoting shows, audiences offering their opinion, badly written amateur reviews, friends promoting friends, and maybe – just maybe – a few informed theatregoing bloggers whom we trust. But guess what? Those citizen critics will be bought out by media companies, or they'll eventually quit, because they're not being paid to filter the culture. And then we're back to square one: emerging voices drowned out and the lowest common denominator triumphant. Money talks and quality walks.

We critics, reviewers, consumer reporters – call us what you will – are the dung beetles of culture. We consume excrement, enriching the soil and protecting livestock from bacterial infection in the process. We are intrinsic to the theatre ecology. Eliminate us at your peril.

• Theatre

David Cote
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Journey to the Heart of the Sun

London Theatre Blog - 10 March, 2010 - 13:44

18:30 – We’re standing outside the Centre Pompidou , sucking in the cold night air. We’ve spent three hours pouring over provocative imagery from influential female artists of the 20th century. Spirits are high and we’ve got an hour to get there. “Let’s go”, we say.

18:35 – We step into a side street bakery . The warm smell of yeast and dough takes reign of our senses. “Une tarte provençale s’il vous plait”. “Et avec cela monsieur?” “Une bouteille d’Évian aussi”. Victuals are called for. The night, we sense, will be long.

18:45 – We pass through the man-sized gates of Metro station Châtelet Les Halles. Line number 1 , direction: Château de Vincennes.

19:00 – Message on the overhead PA system: “Pour des raisons techniques ce service terminera à Nation. Tous les voyageurs sont priés de descendre du train”. A technical fault on the train ahead. Is Paris the new London? We pile out at Nation. Only four stops away! At street level we decide to flag a taxi. “There’s still plenty of time, we’ll make it”.

19:05 – Still at Nation, hurling our arms in the air at anything resembling a cab.

19:10 – A taxi pulls up. The driver greets us with a wry remark. We’re one person over the legal carriage limit. Our collective will defeats his steely guard. “La Cartoucherie de Vincennes s’il vous plait”. “Il va falloir que vous me guidiez, parce que moi je connais pas uh…” He’s never been to the Cartoucherie before. Neither have we. Silence. My brother recalls the directions from the publicity flyer. Off into the night we go!

19:20 – Stuck in traffic. An impenetrable sea of red lights and smoking exhaust pipes. The driver is talking to a colleague on his mobile phone, irritated by an unkept deal. A cultural debate rattles on the radio. The commentators dissect Tony Gatlif’s new film Liberté and its portrayal of Roma communities in Nazi-occupied France. I bite my nails. The others remain calm and still.

19:25 – The driver saunters down a boulevard. “Come on monsieur, peddle to the metal!” My thoughts resound like megaphones. To my right, I see the Château de Vincennes towering over the surrounding woodland in all its medieval glory. “Oh, I think I know where it is”, pipes up the driver. The first positive note of the evening. We drive into the woods. No signs. No time. Just keep going. Lights appear in the distance. We head towards the lights. Could this be it? We pass through an archway carved in an outer wall. “Yes! That’s it!”, we say.

19:30 – We race through the courtyard, no time to stop and stare at the extent of this former munitions factory. Above the entrance I catch the words “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité”, and above that, purpose-made for the event: “Au Fol Espoir, Cabaret populaire, Salle de Théâtre, Concert et Cinématographe.” Here’s to mad hope? Indeed, indeed.

19:35 – We enter the legendary space. It’s a special moment for me. The sort of sentiment you’d expect on a pilgrimage. The front of house is vast. A long, sleek bar lies on the left, and there’s a dining area at centre. The space has been cleverly transformed to mirror the main locale of the play; a ginguette dressed in rich terracotta earth tones; a gathering fit for Jules Verne himself. My tarte provençale suddenly feels much less incongruous.

19:45 – Passing through the throng of punters, we make it to our seats. The auditorium is equally as vast as the front of house, more so with its steeply raked seating. The audience is buzzing. No sooner have we settled in than Ariane Mnouchkine makes an appearance front of stage; unmistakable with that wild, wiry grey hair. Steadfast, like a ship’s captain, she reassures the crowd that despite the delay, proceedings will commence in a few minutes time. Typical isn’t it? You move earth and sea when you’re late for a show, and when you finally get there, it has been delayed anyway!

19:50 – So this is it, 12 years after David Bradby uttered the words “Théâtre du Soleil” in his indelible French Theatre course, I’m finally here. The house lights dim, throats clear, rustles subside and so do all common notions of time…

Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir is a four-hour epic drama loosely based on Les Naufragés du Jonathan">Les Naufragés du Jonathan by the 19th century French author, Jules Verne. It marks the culmination of a yearlong collaboration between co-author Hélène Cixous, musician Jean-Jacques Lemaître, and the 40-strong Soleil collective, led by its industrious and ever-exigent artistic director, Ariane Mnouchkine.

Riding on the wave of post-1968 left-wing political fervour, Mouchkine arrived at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes, former munitions factory turned theatre village, in July 1970 and shortly after produced the company’s celebrated reworking of the French Revolution, 1789. Théâtre du Soleil has lived and worked in this large-scale complex ever since; practicing a much-debated communal (not to say communist) repartition of tasks, roles and livelihood. Traces of 1789’s anarchic-revolutionary theme appear in Verne’s novel and are brought to the fore once more in Fol Espoir through a series of ingenious and reverberant framing devices.

The play opens in early 1914 at the dawn of Europe’s descent into autocratic turmoil. Félix, the proud owner of a Parisian ‘guingette’ called “Le Fol Espoir”, harbours a breakaway film crew in the bar’s dusty attic. Led by director Jean la Palette, the socialist splinter group – formerly workers in a national film company – put the new refuge straight to use. Jean rallies bar staff and crew alike to work on a silent film that chronicles the voyage of European migrants as they set sail from Cardiff in 1895 in search of new utopian beginnings.

The company has gone to painstaking lengths to recreate the atmosphere of early film making. This largely experimental process provides an apt canvas for the ensemble to bring its own rehearsal methodology into play as sets are wheeled in and out, ’special effects’ including fan-powered gale force winds and an arctic blizzard devised through a system of ropes and pullies are worked out in real time, and mistakes and retakes are brought to bare. Mnouchkine’s mastery of space and mise-en-scène, drawing on franco-italian slapstick and declamatory traditions, maintains buoyancy and cadence of action, keeping audience and actors focused throughout.

We follow the Cardiff expedition on its voyage across treacherous seas until its demise at Cape Horn, shipwrecked near the Tierra Del Fuego. Onboard is a rag-tag party of passengers, a panoply of political caricatures from staunch mercantilists to utopian Marxists, colonialists, philantropists, univeralists, a Sicilian family out for a fresh start and young lovers romance-bound. Their dialogue streams across a digital read-out creating a reflexive though sometimes tiresome rift in audience proximity to movement, gesture and written language; and the whole is played out against Lemaître’s spirited musical score.

Present day (1914) interludes fill the gaps between film takes and drive a foreboding (spoken) narrative as the drums of an imminent all-out war begin to beat. Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo sends shockwaves through Le Fol Espoir as does the death of Jean Jaurès. Gradually the sense of uninhibited human potential begins to wane in both time frames and one begins to question who these shipwrecked souls are – these ‘naufragés’ of mad hope – if not ourselves, holed up in asylums of the mind, peering out at the world, ‘unchained from its sun‘. Perhaps in a rare moment of self-critique, Mnouchkine comments here on the challenge of reconciling a particular socio-political stance, a barrage in the face of pervasive consumer capitalism, and beyond that, the problem of adapting to inevitable change. Would Ségolène Royal really have made that much difference?

Despondency is never an endnote for the Théâtre du Soleil, and like the very sun whence the company derives its name, this is a theatre that celebrates the vitality of life in all aspects of its work. So as the show came to a close to the sound of rapturous applause and a standing ovation the ensemble could be found, as is customary at the Cartoucherie, already tending to house affairs, already preparing for the next step.

“Elles@centrepompidou” brings 200 female artists together for one year.

Inside a ‘boulangerie’ near Centre Pompidou.

The indomitable “Tarte Provençale”.

Inside the Metro Station Châtelet Les Halles, Paris.

Publicity poster for Liberté, a film by Tony Gatlif.

The Château de Vincennes, Paris.

A novel by Jules Verne also known as Magellania, completed and published posthumously by the author’s son, Michel Verne, and published in English in two parts as Masterless Man and Unwilling Dictator.

Ariane Mnouchkine. Photo: Wikipedia.

Categories: News

How the UNODC welcomes NGO involvement : slurs and exclusion

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 9 March, 2010 - 14:00

The UNODC has been playing up its committment to NGO involvement in this year's Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting, but they certainly have a long way to go compared with how other members of the UN family engage with civil society. Or even to be just plain civil to civil society...

For a start the Executive Director of the UNODC deliberately slandered a whole section of the NGO community in his opening speech, calling groups who support a debate on wider drug law reforms/regulation "pro-drugs", despite Transform specifically writing to him, requesting that he desist with this childish and unwelcoming slur, on the basis that it was inaccurate, pejorative and offensive. Would he call the US Government "pro-drug" for supporting the regulation of tobacco and alcohol? No. We wrote to him about this after the last CND - see "Reformers are not pro-drug" - and got an acknowledgment of our concerns, but no actual response.

In addition:

• NGOs were initially excluded from the key meetings where the real decisions are taken on resolutions (The Committee of the Whole ), despite having been allowed to attend in previous years. This was only resolved following a procedural intervention from the UK delegation.
• NGOs have one room available for their use, that is too small for us all to fit in at once
• NGOs are expected to share a handful of computers with all the delegates
• The microphone for the single seat allocated for NGOs in the plenary was removed, though has now been returned after we complained.
• The 160 representatives from 55 NGOs (according to the UNODC website) have just this one tiny table (see pic below) to display and share all our materials. Despite assurances that space would be provided to put out materials for delegates to pick up, even this table only materialised today after NGOs complained yesterday.
   

'Ambassador. you are spoiling us'

To be meaningful, NGO engagement has to be about more than just letting us through the main door - it has to be about providing genuine opportunities for us to express our views and engage in meaningful dialogue with decision makers at the UN, and country delegations both in and outside the formal meetings.

I understand UNAIDS is pretty good on all of this, but to take an example I am familiar with, when I was working on international development issues I went to many Annual and Spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank where all the member countries get together.

Whilst far from perfect, and somewhat begrudgingly at first, these involved:

• NGO townhall style meetings with the Heads of the Bank and Fund, and Chairs of key committees where we got time to publicly question them on their policies, and closed meetings with them on key themes with groups of key NGOs
• Staff dedicated not just to NGO registration and support at the events, but also for liaison all year
• Plenty of computers and space dedicated for NGOs
• Plenty of space to display materials, posters etc where the delegates could pick it up
• Controlled but ready access to the press rooms and help distributing press releases to media

NGOs have a huge amount to offer in terms of independent and fresh thinking, factual knowledge and analysis that is not tied to a particular party or national political agenda. This input is invaluable not least forensuring transparency and accountability of these sprawling and often bureaucratic UN organisations to the public at large.

I just hope that Mr. Costa's successor (this is his last CND) takes NGO engagement far more seriously, rather than viewing it as an inconvenience and chore, and at the very least doesn't actively denigrate people and organisations like Transform whose sole purpose is to see the harms from the use and trade in drugs minimised - particularly when they have been awarded UN ECOSOC accreditation to attend and contribute to CND on a formal basis.

Further reading:
Civil Society: The Silenced Partners? Civil Society Engagement with the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (IHRA 2009)

UPDATE 16.00

i ) Mr. Costa is now going to have an informal dialogue meeting with NGOs tomorrow morning - at a time that clashes with a planned NGO briefing meeting.

ii) A second table has belatedly appeared to display NGO materials. (But where is the  designated and signposted NGO zone? Should we really have to beg for these things?)This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

Measure for Measure

London Theatre Blog - 9 March, 2010 - 11:22

‘There is so great a fever on goodness that the dissolution of it must cure it’. Well quite. Act V of Michael Attenborough’s Measure for Measure at the Almeida presents the unedifying spectacle of a ruling class so rapt in the contemplation of its own emotional angst that the state may go merrily to wrack for all that any of them cares. This is a production fascinated by the psychological dissection of individual souls, but without much concern for the real-world consequences of its protagonists’ moral and marital manoeuvres.

Shakespeare’s sleaze-infested Vienna isn’t much in evidence either, despite a promising start, with dance music thumping insistently through the walls of Duke Vincentio’s swanky office (discreetly adorned with images of impeccably classical sexual violence). Trevor Cooper’s unrepentant bruiser of a Pompey radiates enough deceptively genial crookedness to lead a whole city into sin. But his claim that the prison is full of his old punters resounds hollowly, with only a sad (short) parade of girls wrapped in blankets to testify to the success of Angelo’s hard-line ethical crusade.

Within these limits, there’s some fine and intelligent acting on display. Rory Kinnear contrives to make Angelo perversely loveable in his flustered, fumbling attempt at a seduction. Anna Maxwell Martin, by contrast, doesn’t hesitate to let us see the self-righteous fury that fuels Isabella’s principled resistance to his sexual advances. Trying to untangle the ensuing complications, Ben Miles’ Duke is a compelling (and occasionally infuriating) portrait of liberal decency bedevilled by self-doubt; a good man failing to negotiate an accommodation between other people’s destructive certainties.

Making the case for tolerance, Lloyd Hutchinson as Lucio is a smooth-talking swaggerer, unprincipled, unheroic and eminently disarming, ducking niftily round corners to elude the unwelcome attentions of the law. And David Annen’s Provost is a beacon of battered integrity – painstaking, exhausted and doggedly humane.

With a company so gifted, it’s a shame that its members never quite cohere into a united dramatic ensemble. And once we’re in among the twists and turns of one of Shakespeare’s more tortuous final acts, the drama’s main players gaze at one another like strangers. Mutely uncomprehending, mutually accusing, they’re each wrapped-up in their own private martyrdom. And the resulting stalemate denies the audience any shred of optimism or comfort.

Victoria Lloyd (Marianna), David Annen (Provost), Rory Kinnear (Angelo), Ben Miles (Vincentio) in Measure for Measure. Almeida Theatre. Photo: Keith Pattison .

Anna Maxwell Martin (Isabella) and Rory Kinnear (Angelo) in Measure for Measure. Almeida Theatre. Photo: Keith Pattison.

Ben Miles as Vincentio. Measure for Measure, Almeida Theatre. Photo: Keith Pattison.

Categories: News

Transform at CND in Vienna

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 9 March, 2010 - 10:09

As Steve Rolles heads off for California, I am at the UN's annual Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna for which Transform has ECOSOC special consultative status.

UN buildings in Vienna*
We are here as more than just spectators. In addition to attending a range of meetings that I will report on over the next few days, we have co-organised our own event, as part of the rapidly growing campaign for an Impact Assessment of drug policy, with our colleagues at the International Drug Policy Consortium. We are particularly pleased Carel Edwards the Head of the EC's Anti-Drugs Policy Unit has agreed to speak, as well as the Chair of IDPC Mike Trace, and myself (details below).

I would also recommend checking out the live CNDblog run by IHRA and IDPC which will provide regular  independent updates and reporting throughoutthe CND. IHRAs HR2 blog will also be reporting daily (report on Day 1 is already up)

CND 2010 side event -Time for an Impact Assessment of Drug Policy

10 Mar 2010
Vienna, Austria

All stakeholders in the drugs debate share the goal of a policy and legal structures that maximise social, environmental, physical and psychological wellbeing. Particularly at a time of economic stricture, it is also crucial that drug policy expenditures are cost-effective. Yet despite the many billions of dollars in drug-related spending each year, there are great concerns about the outcomes of the current approach, at the domestic and international level.

However, the debate around improving drug policy has been emotive, polarised and deadlocked. Proponents of different views of the best way forward tend to focus on the arguments and evidence that support their perspective. In this context, national governments and international agencies need to take a structured approach to assessing the best mix of evidence-based drug policies to promote human development, human security and human rights. Impact Assessment methodologies provide a potential mechanism for conducting an independent, neutral analysis that all stakeholders can support. These methodologies have been used to great effect in other policy areas, comparing the economic, environmental and social costs and benefits of existing policies against a full range of alternatives. For an Impact Assessment of drug policy, these alternatives should include more intensive/punitive enforcement approaches, as well as options for decriminalisation of personal use, and models for legal regulation of drug production and supply.This introductory event on Impact Assessment will consist of short presentations and a Question and Answer session covering:

• How Impact Assessments can help;
• How Impact Assessments might be commissioned and structured, both nationally and internationally;
• Opportunities and Barriers; and
• Impact Assessment of drug policy and the EU.

Speakers:

• Carel Edwards, Head of the EC Anti-Drugs Policy Unit, DG JLS
• Mike Trace, Chair of IDPC
• Martin Powell, Campaigns Manager, Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

* pic: Steve Rolles 2008This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

What are theatrical previews for?

Guardian Theatre Blog - 8 March, 2010 - 19:30

Andrew Lloyd Webber is furious that bloggers have been 'reviewing' previews of his new show. Does he have reason to be angry?

Andrew Lloyd Webber would presumably like to uninvent the internet. The official press night of his latest show, Love Never Dies, a sequel to the hugely successful Phantom of the Opera, is tonight, but the composer is furious that message boards, blogs and chatrooms are already buzzing with opinion posted by those who have been to preview performances.

No doubt if the comment was positive, Lloyd Webber would not be moaning, but a great deal of what has been written is not, including a hilarious review by the waggish West End Whingers, who have rechristened the show Paint Never Dries. Lloyd Webber believes that those attending previews need to understand that they are not seeing the final cut, but a "work in progress".

It's an argument that might hold water if Love Never Dies had followed the usual West End convention of offering its preview audiences a discount rather than charging full whack. If you are seeing a work in progress, why should you pay full price?

Maybe producers should pay the preview audiences, who are, after all, acting as vital guinea pigs; however much a show is rehearsed, nobody can predict how an audience will respond until it's put in front of them. It's common for shows to be reworked substantially during the preview period (War Horse went from a disastrous first preview to a triumphant first night), and with musicals that can mean excising songs or adding new ones. In some cases, such as The Witches of Eastwick, no amount of tweaking can salvage the end result.

Many of our best directors and companies, such as Katie Mitchell, Simon McBurney, Improbable and Fevered Sleep, never stop working on a show; it will continue to evolve until the very last night of a run. But a multi-million pound-show like Love Never Dies will be locked down and fixed like a fly in amber at the point when the producers think it's just right. The trick is to bag a ticket when it's as good as it's ever going to be, but hasn't yet gone mechanically stale. Adding salt to the wound of those who paid for previews, Lloyd Webber quotes the old adage: "Never go and see a musical until a month after it opens." On that basis, I reckon that 9 April could be a good date to choose. Provided, of course, that it's still running by then.

• Musicals
• Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Theatre

Lyn Gardner
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Want drama? Step into a Birmingham kitchen | Alfred Hickling

Guardian Theatre Blog - 8 March, 2010 - 17:34

The worst wedding party I have ever attended but the most enjoyably inventive piece of theatre I've seen this year ... Behna (Sisters) is the ticket, and not just for the samosas

There's a wedding party going on in a Punjabi household in a modestly sized semi in Selly Oak. I don't know the people getting married, but I have been invited, along with 19 other strangers, who seem to share my disorientation. There's not much room to move in the front room; certainly not enough to essay the Bollywood moves the family seem eager to teach their guests to break the ice, but the bhajis are excellent and the sweets tempting. Eventually, I revert to the time-honoured technique of hanging out in the kitchen – only to find there's a crisis going on in there. The eldest sister has been left slaving over a hot stove, while her younger sister flirts shamelessly and taunts her for being overweight. An argument breaks out: boiling oil is spilled. Suddenly we need an ambulance.

It is possibly the worst party I have ever attended, though it is also the most enjoyably inventive piece of theatre I've seen this year. This is not really a fractious family get-together (though it certainly feels like one) but a new play, Behna (Sisters), by Sonia Likhari, which has been coproduced by Kali Theatre, Birmingham Rep and Black Country Touring, and is being staged in various West Midlands kitchens for the next couple of weeks.

Likhari's play is worth seeing for the samosas alone, though it is not the first drama to give an authentic taste of Indian cuisine. Rani Moorthy's terrific one-woman show, Curry Tales, was part-confessional monologue, part cookery-demonstration, and still has me salivating at the memory. Then there was Quarantine's EatEat, staged at the Guildhall in Leicester, in which a group of asylum seekers hosted a dinner while some of them did a traditional Persian dance to Britney Spears on the table.

Masala theatre is more than a gimmick, as it might be seen to have roots in the informal traditions of south Indian kuthu drama (there's a great example of the style here on YouTube), in which distinctions between performer and audience are broken down to create an intimate, shared experience. Yet the achievement of this particular production is that it manages to feel like a spontaneous gathering while being a rigorously structured piece of drama. Though it occurs in a real house, it doesn't happen in real time – the cast manipulate props and costumes to indicate when the action has skipped forward into the future. It really enables us to appreciate Likhari's skilful development of character; though it does suggest that the same carton of orange juice has been in the fridge for several years.

Tickets are limited, but this is one party you won't regret attending if you can wangle an invitation. It hardly does Behna justice to call it a kitchen-sink play. Dishwasher drama might be nearer the mark.

• Theatre

Alfred Hickling
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

With Coronation Street – Abridged: Live! the soap is set to hit the stage

Guardian Theatre Blog - 8 March, 2010 - 12:21

Coronation Street is perfect for theatre - which other shows should tread the boards?

Coronation Street clearly has no intentions of ageing gracefully. Not content with airing soap's first transsexual wedding as part of the show's 50th birthday celebrations, the full half-century of Weatherfield goings-on will also be heading to the stage.

Coronation Street – Abridged: Live! (that's a lot of punctuation for a four-word title) will apparently cover "over 7000 episodes and 2,000 storylines including 115 deaths, 37 births and 86 marriages, in under two hours". The writer, Jonathan Harvey, obviously has some work on his hands.

But which other shows would you like to see on stage? Soaps seem the obvious choice, if only because they offer plenty of variety when it comes to cast and storyline. Here are my choices – share yours with us below.

Neighbours — the musical

The stage version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, arguably already fulfils this particular need, what with Jason Donovan starring, and a Kylie song in the score. But the world needs to be reminded of classic storylines such as Shane's diving career (wouldn't that be brilliant on stage?), and Cody's death by drug dealers. It's high camp and high melodrama, and it needs songs – if only to immortalise Dr Clive's stripping career in a big musical number.

Emmerdale

There is, of course, the animals-on-stage issue. And, while there is a fine theatrical tradition of using impressive mechanical creations instead of the real thing, well-trained livestock bring an added aaah-factor. In any case, given the number of disasters that have struck the village over the years, the special effects departments will already have quite a lot on: what with the spectacular plane crashes, floods and explosions. Better get training those sheep.

Dynasty

Frankly I can't believe that this hasn't been done before – nothing seems more ripe for a stage adaptation. With fabulous costumes, crazy plot twists and one of the biggest bitches in the history of fiction, there is simply no way that this wouldn't be a box office smash.

Eldorado

It was a televisual flop, but Eldorado remains fondly remembered, and the impact of the doomed soap on popular culture deserves to be recognised. If a stage production could cast professional actors who can speak English (unlike the soap opera, which made the fatal error of just drafting in random people off the street regardless of linguistic abilities), Bunny, Fizz, Pilar, Marcus and the rest could be brought to life once more.

• Coronation Street
• Soap opera
• Television

Carrie Dunn
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Transform goes to California

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 8 March, 2010 - 11:44

Steve from Transform is speaking at the Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) conference in San Francisco this Saturday, presenting Transforms latest publication 'After the War on Drugs; Blueprint for Regulation', at a panel discussion titled 'should we legalize all drugs'. The full SSDP conference program is available here (pdf).


Immediately following the SSDP event Steve is attending the 2-day RAND International Society for Study of Drug Policy 4th annual conference in Santa Monica, where he is chairing a panel discussion on 'Prevention and other community approaches to drug policy'. This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

11 and 12

London Theatre Blog - 7 March, 2010 - 12:26

In 11 and 12 legendary theatre director, Peter Brook, turns his attention to a religious dispute between two rival African groups, one that ultimately leads to war. The piece, overall, is an apt metaphor for our times and asks the difficult question: at what price do we seek religious certainty?

11 and 12 is based on a novel by Malian author Amadou Hampaté Bâ, The Life and Teaching of Tierno Bokar: The Sage of Bandiagara. Tierno Bokar was a sufi mystic born in Mali during the late 1800’s and served as Hampaté Bâ’s spiritual teacher. Their relationship serves as the basis for the play which focuses on the consequences of a disagreement between followers of the same faith over how many times their sacred prayer should be said – eleven or twelve – who’s right, who’s wrong and does it really matter?

The play opens in Mali under French colonial rule. The French officers are portrayed as arrogant and ill-informed colonial masters who feel nothing but contempt for those they are meant to govern. When the spiritual leader of both groups dies before he can issue a final decree as to who is ultimately right, should it be eleven or twelve, his followers split and decide to follow separate leaders. Both leaders are shown to be men of true faith, exhibiting a genuine desire to find a solution to this theological problem. Meanwhile, the French officers stand back and watch tensions rise, hoping to capitalize on the civil war they know will surely follow.

One of the most touching moments in the play comes when the two leaders of 11 and 12 meet and talk through the night about their conflicting beliefs. After the meeting one leader converts to the other’s cause having been convinced that his interpretation is in fact correct. This genuine act of conversion is the spark that lights the flame which will eventually lead to wholesale slaughter.

Peter Brook brings his customary magic to this fascinating piece. With a minimal use of props and set, he manages effortlessly to evoke a Malian village, a river boat journey and towards the end of the play a Parisian cemetery. Perhaps the play’s most ecstatic moment comes during the meeting of the two religious leaders, a meeting illuminated by a single shimmering light.

The play concludes with the death of both leaders. One still living in his native Mali but now serving a sort of self-imposed exile from the church he once led, due to the fanatical fundamentalism of the cleric who now preaches there, while the other dies in Paris, exiled by the French colonialists who feared the power they thought he had over his followers. 11 and 12’s climax can be seen in two ways, one perhaps that those who practice religion rarely make room for debate but are ultimately happier with religious absolutes or two, true followers of god will always be willing to strive for what they feel is ultimately the true message.

Cover photo of a novel by Amadou Hampaté Bâ.

Categories: News

What to see: Lyn Gardner's theatre tips

Guardian Theatre Blog - 5 March, 2010 - 17:20

Oh! What a Lovely War kicks off in Newcastle, and Debbie Tucker Green's Random christens the Royal Court's shopping centre pop-up space

Another big week ahead, particularly with A Good Night Out in the Valleys opening at the Brentwood Miners' Institute in Gwent tonight, the first show in the National Theatre of Wales inaugural season. Masses of more good stuff to come from that direction, and booking opens on Monday for Mike Pearson's production of The Persians at the Ministry of Defence's training village in the Brecon Beacons in August. It will be a hot ticket for those not heading for Edinburgh so get in quick.

The other three big openings of the week are revivals of Oh What a Lovely War at Northern Stage in Newcastle (then on tour), Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw in London Assurance at the Olivier, and the premiere of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Love Never Dies.

There are also loads of previously seen shows that are coming back this week: Debbie Tucker Green's Random christens the Royal Court's pop-up space in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre before going on tour, the footie drama And Did Those Feet returns to the Octagon in Bolton, and Sound and Fury's Kursk is at Bristol Old Vic before heading back to the Young Vic. Naomi Wallace's The Fever Chart, seen at Theatre Royal York last year, goes into Trafalgar Studios and the fabulous Australian circus, Circa, is taking over the Barbican in London and shouldn't be missed.

Other revivals include real-life husband and wife John Godber and Jane Thornton starring in Godber's mid-90s hit April in Paris at Hull Truck, Tom Murphy's The Sanctuary Lamp at the Arcola, and Shared Experience is setting off on tour at Salisbury Playhouse with The Glass Menagerie. Talawa is reviving Mustapha Matura's 1976 comedy Rum and Coca-Cola at West Yorkshire Playhouse. Philip Ridley's Moonfleece, first seen in the NT Connections season, gets its first professional production at Rich Mix in London's East End and then that, too, is touring.

You've still time to catch Theatre Delicatessen's revival of Mercury Fur at Picton Place. I also recommend DC Moore's Honest at the Mailcoach pub round the corner from the Royal and Derngate in Northampton. This could be Moore's year: Honest confirms the promise of Alaska at the Royal Court in 2007 and he has a new play, The Empire, about Afghanistan, premiering in Sloane Square next month, as well as another, Town, as part of Northampton's Hometown season later in the year.

Glasgow is looking good with the National Theatre of Scotland premiering plays for young people in a season at the Tron that includes Douglas Maxwell's The Miracle Man and New Territories is under way which this week features Into the New, a four-day festival of performances and discussions featuring Ron Athey, Nic Green and Anne Bean, among others, exploring how we might change performance and perform change. The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a hit for the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.

In London, the Unicorn is premiering Carl Miller's adaptation of Siobhan Dowd's wonderful children's thriller, The London Eye Mystery and Lone Twin's The Catastrophe Trilogy is in the Pit. I'm going to see all three parts tomorrow, in a day that also includes a walk with the company to the Watts Memorial in Postman's Park. Let me know what I've left out – what's hot and what's not.

• Theatre
• West End

Lyn Gardner
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Can theatre beat the BNP? | Jo Caird

Guardian Theatre Blog - 5 March, 2010 - 15:05

A number of theatre pieces are addressing the rise of rightwing extremists – but can the arts community really hope to make a difference?

Two weeks ago I attended the launch rally of Expose the BNP, a campaign that aims to equip journalists with the tools to report effectively on the British National Party. During the question-and-answer session, Ranjit Atwal of the Broadway, a small arts venue in BNP heartland Barking, stood up to tell us about a politically-inspired festival they're curating in April, called Spin the Election. The programme will include A Day at the Racists, a new play by Anders Lustgarten that opened this week at the Finborough Theatre in south London.

Lustgarten's play is just one of several theatre events in the capital at the moment that address the rise of the BNP. But can these productions really further the debate around racism, or is this merely the liberal middle-class arts community trying to make itself feel current and politically engaged? Say what you like about the London theatre fringe, but it's hardly the traditional stomping ground of your average BNP supporter.

The issue is interesting. Theatre may often preach to the converted – just think of David Hare – but that's not to say that the converted don't have a lot to learn. Set in Barking, A Day at the Racists charts how a former Labour activist's growing discontent leads him into the lap of the local BNP, a group whose supposed modernisations make it possible for him to forget his instinctive abhorrence of the party's racist and exclusionary message. Lustgarten's brilliantly observed play forces us to look beyond the comfortable anti-BNP rhetoric of the liberal media and consider the conditions that make an extreme rightwing party seem, at least for a very tiny percentage of the electorate, a valid political option. Rex Obano's play Decade, produced at Battersea's Theatre503 earlier this year, does something similar, forcing audience members who might not ordinarily be sympathetic to empathise with BNP members by casting them as silent supporters at a local party meeting.

But can this kind of theatre go further, and directly influence communities themselves? Karena Johnson, recently appointed artistic director of the Broadway, believes it can: by talking directly to the people it describes, she reasons, it might lead them to reconsider their own engagement with the politics around them. I don't doubt Johnson when she says the Broadway's audience is very different from the Finborough's – she describes the Barking community as proudly working-class, and says she expects the play to receive a much more lively reception in east London. I'd be thrilled if she were right, but I'm just not sure it can.

I get the uncomfortable feeling, particularly when reading the marketing material from another current BNP-inspired play, Philip Ridley's Moonfleece – the press release of which tells us that the show will be touring to "some of the UK's most disadvantaged areas, where the British National Party has made recent gains, playing to audiences that rarely see challenging, professional drama" – that this desire to change things is really just a conceit, albeit laudable, of the middle-class arts establishment.

Theatres across the country, even those in the most disadvantaged locations, such as the Doncaster Little Theatre – where Moonfleece is also playing – tend to be patronised by already open-minded members of their local communities; it's not often that this includes potential BNP supporters. The stark truth is that it's not easy to reach the type of people the producers would most like to get to. There's only so far that theatre can go.

• Theatre
• BNP

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Interview with Polarbear: spoken word artist

London Theatre Blog - 5 March, 2010 - 08:20

Polarbear is a UK based spoken word artist with a sharp voice and a passion for storytelling. He has performerd internationally, from the London’s Southbank Centre to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His piece RETURN is part of “The Big Story” season at the Battersea Arts Centre.

Diana: How did RETURN come about?

Polarbear: RETURN has been coming for a while. I knew that I wanted to take my storytelling further and everything that I’d written before had been pieces made up of scenes, so it seemed natural to take that to the level of a full filmic experience. Working with the creative team we got together meant I could bring the story to life in a way that I never could on my own. The story is about my relationship with home and it really feels like me getting some things out that have been growing since I started performing in 2005. Plus it’s exciting to try something that hasn’t been done.

Diana: What guided the decision to perform RETURN in different spaces around the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC)?

Polarbear: Initially we wanted to perform it each night in a different space, the idea being that the carbon test of a good story (teller) is adaptability and it doesn’t matter where you are. Then as we developed design ideas and played with how it would feel, we got excited by the idea of the piece having one home and visiting other spaces. It will be interesting to see how the spaces affect each other.

Diana: What is your approach to language in your work?

Polarbear: I’m a nerd. I get obsessive over the rhythms and patterns of speech and the dynamics of description. Writing for my own voice has become what I do so the exciting thing is to know me and trust my strengths, but also to make sure that each new piece is a push in developing both my written storytelling as well as my performance. It is important for me that the difference between the everyday me and the me on stage is minimal. I don’t want to pretend to be someone else. I want to be me, taking you with me through a story. With that in mind I’m quite a ‘less is more’ person.

Diana: In your last piece, If I Cover my Nose you can’t see Me, you fused together spoken word, theatre and live visuals. How did that approach come about?

Polarbear: I never really set about to create some kind of fusion piece. I had the idea for the story, wrote it and along the way thought about the idea of it feeling like a live graphic novel and luckily found a character artist in Goonism who fit the piece perfectly. To me it’s about conveying a particular story and what makes sense rather than trying to wow with a concept.

Diana: Your work is often rhythmical and immediate. How do these elements fit into your storytelling?

Polarbear: Hopefully those elements are my storytelling. The rhythms of speech, description, dialogue and the craft of telling a good tale combined with the immediacy of the form of spoken word. Me on stage telling you a story right now. That’s why it’s exciting. Sink or swim. Hopefully I can swim.

Diana: Hybridity is a major aspect in your work, fusing poetry with rap, and sonnets with every day language. Do you fuse different elements depending on the story you work on?

Polarbear: To be honest I never think about it. I have an idea and it becomes clear early on what I imagine the particular piece will feel like. The elements of where I’m from and my creative background just leak through I guess. Everything must serve the story and everything is a definite choice. Nothing I share is undecided.

Diana: Can you talk about your process?

Polarbear: My work revolves around me. Where I am, what I’m finding important, things I’m realising and also things I remember. A certain idea rises to the top and becomes all I can think about. From there it becomes all about characters. Bits of me, bits of people I know well, bits I create. Those characters in the situation I have been thinking about myself in, I put the characters in the situation I’ve been thinking about myself in, and go from there. Ever since If I cover my nose I have been thorough with back-story. Every character gets fully fleshed out until they’re real. Then I set about writing scenes. Sometimes things come out in an order, other times it’s more random and all the time I write about 10 times as much as finally gets in to the piece. Throughout the writing process I am speaking the words and allowing the feel of their delivery to influence the writing.

Diana: And where does staging come in?

Polarbear: For RETURN I worked very closely with Yael Shavit the director and script developer. I would be writing small chunks and sharing them with her and we kind of built the story together. The staging comes when the words are edited down to the least amount possible to say what we want to say and I have them in me enough to play with their delivery. Then we start to play and the writing is always affected by what we do.

Diana: You’ve travelled a lot with you work. Does audience reception and intimacy change from place to place?

Polarbear: In essence it’s the same. You can feel when you have people with you, really listening and I’ve been lucky enough to have that feeling wherever I’ve gone. There are some people who maybe view my work as overly simple and possible a little blunt, and as a result connect less with it, but in terms of intimacy it’s basically a slice of me and my personality so if you think I’m alright we’re fine and if you don’t then you’ll probably start thinking about what’s for dinner.

Diana: What freedom do you think your medium offers you?

Polarbear: I can say what I want and if it’s honest then real people will respond. I think spoken word is a funny one really because some people seem to forget that that’s all it is and anything about the performance has to be on top of that foundation – in my opinion of course.

Diana: What is the distinction between theatre and spoken word for you?

Polarbear: I don’t know really. I want to tell stories, just like most forms of performance. I write for me to speak. If it’s performed in a theatre is that theatre? If it’s upstairs in a pub is that spoken word? I don’t mind. It doesn’t change what I do. It just means sometimes people have to spend more to see me do it.

Diana: What’s the most challenging element of your work?

Polarbear: Not so long ago I would have said remembering why I do it, but that’s not a problem now. RETURN has been a real maturation for me in every sense and as lame as it sounds the only challenging thing is me doing the story justice every single time I perform it.

Diana: Future work?

Polarbear: I know what’s next story-wise and it’s a big’un. I’m a big believer in talking about stuff when it exists, but I do know it will be called sTaTe and will be unlike anything I’ve done before. I’m excited by the idea of writing for other people too. I wrote a play for 5 MCs with Birmingham REP last year and enjoyed the process. I’ll be doing more of that kind of thing from now on I think.

Diana: Career highlight?

Polarbear: This piece RETURN without question. I’ve been lucky enough to get opportunities to realise the ideas that I’d been stocking up for years and so each new thing feels like a stepping stone that I sometimes look back at and always smile about. The fact that I get to have an idea and make something out of nothing and work with talented people who share my love for stories is an ongoing highlight. I sound proper lovey don’t I? Yuk.

Diana: Thank you!

Categories: News

NAO drugs report - No framework to evaluate value for money. Again.

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 4 March, 2010 - 15:12

A report by the NAO into government action to tackle problem drug use published today has concluded that:
"Without an evaluative framework for the Strategy as a whole, the NAO is not able to conclude positively on value for money."
No evaluative framework. This is a pitiful point to have reached, two years after the 2008 strategy was supposedly reviewed for efficacy, its success trumpeted repeatedly.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, in an extraordinary understatement said: "So overall performance measurement across the range of programmes needs to be put in place."
To add insult to injury, this report only covers specific initiatives to “tackle problem drug use”. It hasn’t even looked at policing costs, (which, according to the value for money study that Transform tore out of the clutches of the Home Office under FOI, constitutes the far larger expenditure) – £2 billion a year – and is subject to even less value for money scrutiny.
So, Impact Assessment anyone?This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

NAO drugs report - No framework to evalute value for money. Again.

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 4 March, 2010 - 15:12

A report by the NAO into government action to tackle problem drug use published today has concluded that:
"Without an evaluative framework for the Strategy as a whole, the NAO is not able to conclude positively on value for money."
No evaluative framework. This is a pitiful point to have reached, two years after the 2008 strategy was supposedly reviewed for efficacy, its success trumpeted repeatedly.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, in an extraordinary understatement said: "So overall performance measurement across the range of programmes needs to be put in place." 
To add insult to injury, this report only covers specific initiatives to “tackle problem drug use”. It hasn’t even looked at policing costs, (which, according to the value for money study that Transform tore out of the clutches of the Home Office under FOI, constitutes the far larger expenditure) – £2 billion a year – and is subject to even less value for money scrutiny.
So, Impact Assessment anyone?This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News

Man or mouse: has Equity lost its bite? | Michael Simkins

Guardian Theatre Blog - 4 March, 2010 - 14:43

The actors' union is struggling to prove it still matters – as its new campaign to tackle vermin in West End theatres demonstrates

The mice are at it again, I see. Yet again they've been spotted running amok in London's crumbling theatreland, excreting in the cold cream and expiring in the wings.

Equity has been complaining for many years now about the backstage conditions in West End venues. But does anything change? Does it heck. And you can rest assured that those very same actors who'll be moaning about the union's impotence to represent their – our – interests, will be the very ones who long ago lapsed their membership.

Far from being the muscular entity I recall from the 1960s and 70s, one that could set wage structures, negotiate overtime and working conditions, and even insist on the odd backstage visit from pest control, the actors' trade union now more resembles an elderly grandfather attempting to reason with the yobs as they make off with his roofing slates.

With the days of compulsory membership long gone, the acting fraternity that once nourished Equity and provided its strength are increasingly choosing to save their membership fee. The pretext is always the same: Equity is toothless, so why bother? And although they'll deny it, probably below this very blog, the collective power of the union is further weakened with each individual desertion: a perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fact, far from trying to sort out compensation for injuries, unfair dismissals and breaches of contract by rogue managements, most of Equity's precious resources are now used up trying to persuade reluctant thesps to join in the first place. And it's not just youngsters and drama school graduates who prefer to go it alone. The list of experienced and well-respected actors continuing to opt out is equally dismaying. Not long ago I gently upbraided a leading TV actor after he admitted he'd let his membership lapse. His reply was stark: "I'll fight my own battles," he replied. "That's what I have an agent for. Why bother paying twice?"

The point he was missing is that it's not for his benefit that he should be stumping up his annual fee. It's for the poor beleaguered college graduates doing 85-hour weeks in summer season, with no subsistence allowance and no regulations to protect them. Think I'm out of touch? Don't you believe it.

I've done several stints as Equity deputy (the cast member traditionally voted for at the beginning of a job to reflect the interests of union members in case of conflict), and these are the tales I hear. New entrants to the acting game are now increasingly at the mercy of unscrupulous managements, who know they can ride a coach and horses through any hard-won legislation. After all, there are plenty of others who'll take your job. To quote one particularly sleazy producer I heard about: "Don't you want to get on, you little fool?"

And even if they want to join up, young actors face other, less tangible deterrents. During my last job as Equity dep, one youngster tried to articulate why she wouldn't sign up. "It's my uncle," she explained miserably, citing an extremely famous pop star of the 1960s. "He's told me that if the management hear I'm a member of Equity they'll not re-employ me when the contract comes up for renewal." You'll never walk alone? Fat chance.

So pity the poor union as they speak out against mice. With so much to do and so few resources with which to do it, it's a bit like the black knight in the Monty Python film, gallantly battling on despite being repeatedly dismembered. Never mind the mice – if many more actors keep their hands in their pockets, soon Equity won't be able to summon up sufficient funds for headed notepaper, let alone a phone call to Rentokil.

• West End
• Theatre

Michael Simkins
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Categories: News

Parliamentary Cocaine Trade Report - Good, bad and downright ugly

Transform: Drugs Policy Reform - 3 March, 2010 - 16:48

Today the Home Affairs Committee publishes a report on the Cocaine Trade - to which Transform made a written submission and was invited to give oral evidence. Whilst there is some limited useful content and recommendations, the report overall is desperately disappointing and unlikely to impress or please anyone. It is characterised by weak analysis and poor scholarship, leading to a set of mostly pointless recommendations. Occasionally the recommendations are actively obnoxious (see sentencing recommendations below) - the overwhelming impression being of an ill considered and rushed inquiry that has been badly chaired and poorly supported - and one that has a distinct pre-election feel to it (the evidence has been shaped around a pre-decided narrative).

This is particularly disappointing coming from the same committee that in 2002 produced one of the most important, thorough and influential drug policy reports of the modern era (especially given the fact that three of the committee members from 2001 are still members). Also disappointing is that the report lacks anything approaching the analytical rigor of the last major Select Committee drug report; the Science and Technology committee report on the classification system from 2006, with key analysis from that 2006 report (on, for example, drug harms or the deterrent effect) notably absent from this new HASC cocaine report. It really does seem like a massive step backwards - with few lessons learned, and others forgotten or actively abandoned.

Before chronicling some of the report's multiple failings, first we should acknowledge its strengths. Transform is pleased that the Committee has called for “a full and independent value–for–money assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and related legislation and policy”. This was one of Transform's specific calls to the committee in both our written and oral evidence, and something we have campaigned for since 2002.

We hope that the Government will now reconsider our call to evaluate drug policy using established Impact Assessment tools in the light of this new HASC recommendation, as it was dismissed by the PM, following a private meeting with a Transform representative last year.

We were also pleased to see this recommendation being supported by discussion of the Home Office 'value for money' study that Transform secured publication of earlier this year. Given that the media will almnost certainly ignore this section of the report I think it is worth reproducing in full (note: i. Steve Rolles is from Transform, ii. David Nutt was still chair of the ACMD at this point):

20. Some witnesses suggested there was a need for a cost/benefit analysis of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, to assess the evidence of whether the Government’s drugs policy offered value for money. Steve Rolles called specifically for a value for money impact assessment of the 1971 legislation, and told us that the Act had “never been subject to that kind of scrutiny and it is time that it was”. Professor Nutt supported an impact assessment, saying “I think my Council would be quite comfortable if people wanted to review the Act”

21. On 21 January 2010 the Home Office published an evaluation completed in June 2007 by an academic at the University of York entitled Drugs Value for Money Review, which Transform had been campaigning for three years to have released under a Freedom of Information request. The review as published made two key conclusions. Firstly, that there was a real lack of data collected by Government to enable an assessment of how effective its drug policy had been, particularly on the supply side. It stated: Policies to reduce the availability of drugs produced the greatest analytical challenge. The absence of robust and recognised measures of success, combined with a limited base of research evidence makes it particularly difficult to draw conclusions about supply-side policy.Secondly, it concluded that Government spending on drugs had not been properly evaluated, making it hard to draw conclusions about whether resources were appropriately allocated:There is no single, comprehensive, agreed overview of cross-government expenditure. Evaluations of effectiveness are patchy and incomplete, making it difficult to assess value for money and to decide how to best allocate resources in the futureThere was a similar indictment in analysis carried out by the UK Drug Policy Commission—a grouping of expert drug treatment and medical practitioners—in April 2007, which concluded that it was “difficult to estimate government expenditure on drug policy, as it is not transparently reported” and that “the UK invests remarkably little in independent evaluation of the impact of drug policies, especially enforcement. This needs redressing if policy makers are to be able to identify and introduce effective measures in the future”

22. The Home Office review was intended to inform the Government’s new Drugs Strategy 2008–2018.32 However, the publication of the strategy in February 2008, only eight months after the review was completed, suggests it is extremely unlikely that the serious criticisms voiced in the review about the lack of an evidence base on which to assess the effectiveness of expenditure on drugs could have been addressed in time.
24. We were very interested to learn that a Government review completed in 2007—the publication of which the Home Office had fought for three years—concluded that the effectiveness and value for money of the Government’s drugs spending could not be evaluated. It is at best careless that the Government nevertheless pressed ahead and published its Drugs Strategy in February 2008 without publishing a proper value–for–money analysis of where resources would be most effectively targeted. We therefore support calls for an full and independent value–for–money assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and related legislation and policy. This assessment must also address the concerns about inadequate data collection raised in the 2007 review. Beyond this section there is little positive to be said about the report, and much to criticize. Large swathes of it are essentially a workmanlike summary of evidence taken from various sources, prominently including the UNODC World Drugs Report, and various documents from the EMCDDA, NTA, SOCA, UKBA and others. There is nothing wrong with any of this of course, the researchers having done an adequate job of compiling some potentially useful supporting evidence. There are, however, some serious sins of omission. The problems come partly from the evidence that was missed or ignored, but perhaps more importantly, the weak policy analysis that flows from all the evidence presented as we will discuss.

The most notable omission from the evidence considered is the World Health Organisation' s cocaine report from 1995 (details and link to the full report here) the largest global study of cocaine use, risks and policy ever undertaken. This report was suppressed under pressure from the US (until it was leaked into the public domain years later) essentially because it did not fit with the prevailing prohibitionist political narrative. That the HASC has chosen to overlook it, despite it being flagged up in Transform's written submission (and sent separately to the committee secretariat) is a telling reflection on the committee's mindset.


The tone and overarching narrative of the report are framed in the press release that accompanies it, which contains some very dramatic language about the nature of cocaine, and from the outset makes the cardinal error of conflating prohibition policy harms with drug use harms:
"In a report published today, Wednesday 3 March, the Home Affairs Committee warns that a deadly, socially and environmentally destructive drug seems to be becoming more widely acceptable in the UK, and says more must be done to tackle the demand side in the UK alongside international efforts to disrupt smuggling."This mistaken conflation of drug use and drug policy harms (something that, disappointingly, David Nutt's evidence also failed to challenge) was something Transform specifically warned against in its written submission;
"Any discussion of the cocaine trade in the UK, and what our response should be, requires that we separate the public health problems associated with cocaine use per se, from the secondary criminal justice harms associated with its prohibition."
The press release then produces a 'must try harder' admonition of supply side enforcement agencies' commitment to 'stemming the flow':

"The Committee praises SOCA’s and UKBA’s general approach, namely to actively disrupt the cocaine trade overseas and thereby prevent it reaching the UK..... The Committee was shocked to discover only 3.5 tonnes of the estimated 25–30 tonnes of cocaine which does enter the UK border was seized in the UK last year. The Committee says interception of 12–14% of cocaine reaching the UK is ‘woefully inadequate’, while UKBA’s target to seize 2.4 tonnes of cocaine this year is ‘deeply unambitious’ and lower than the amount it seized in both previous years"
Adding that :
"The Committee suggests UKBA’s low seizure target reflects a culture of complacency"This summarizes the key failing of the report's analysis; the implied suggestion that the failings of supply side enforcement could somehow be solved with more resources or better organisation, or that the supply of cocaine could genuinely be prevented such that the cocaine problem would somehow diminish or even disappear. This all harks back to the denial-of-reality prohibitionist analysis that: drugs are bad, therefore we will ban them and make the problem go away. Once you have bought into this hopelessly naive premise, as the committee chair seems to have done, all other facts and analysis naturally have to be shaped around it. This is the process that we then have to endure for the majority of the report.

For no obvious or stated reason, the report spends an inordinate amount of time critiquing both UK cocaine seizure rates and the collection and presentation of seizure statistics, somehow managing to completely avoid grappling with the actual impact of seizures on levels of availability. It is important to bear in mind that seizure rates, even if you buy into the overarching prohibitionist analysis (see above), are a proxy measure (or process measure) for the efficacy of supply side enforcement - the actual outcome measures of which are levels of availability, and ultimately levels of use/misuse. At one point the report does note that:
The doubling in wholesale price of cocaine at the UK border between 1999 and 2009 does indicate that more effective supply-side enforcement may have squeezed the supply of the drug to the UK. However, we do not consider that the substantial fall in purity of cocaine at street level can be attributed to supply-side enforcement. The consistency of purity at the UK border but fluctuating levels found in street–level seizures within the UK—some with as little as 5% purity—suggest to us that the fall in purity is not so much driven by overall squeezing of the cocaine supply to the UK, but rather associated with the emergence of a ‘two-tier’ market in which there is demand for lower price, more heavily cut cocaine on the street, as well as higher end product by other consumers. The use of more sophisticated cutting agents which themselves mimic the analgesic effect of cocaine may mean that less pure cocaine has gone to some degree unnoticed. And the increase in the number of users may in itself have driven the available cocaine to be more thinly spread, thus reducing purity levels. (Paragraph 162) This is the nearest we get to a discussion of the impact of seizures on actual availability but appears to suggest that the impact is marginal at best. The committee suggests that current seizure rates of around 10% are inadequate, but does not suggest what % would be good enough - or suggest how such improved seizure rates might be achieved, or explore possible knock on impacts even if it were (like, for example, displacement to other drugs). There are some rather random examples of enforcement best practice based on the committee's field trips, but it is far from clear if they are seriously suggesting that such models - if rolled out nationally/ internationally - would somehow deliver the desired outcome of actually reducing cocaine use/harms. Crucially they fail to engage with key elements of the analysis:

1. The unintended negative consequences of supply side enforcement - as spelt out in detail in the submissions of Transform and others, as well as being detailed by the UNODC. Some of these harms are mentioned - such as environmental destruction, but again these are blamed on cocaine users rather than the prohibitionist policy environment the committee is evidently supporting. The role of prohibition in creating opportunities for criminals is mentioned only once, in a Transform quote (below).
   
   
2. The' balloon effect' - that even seemingly 'successful' localised supply side enforcement will only achieve a displacement of illicit activity, not elminate it. Steve is quoted in the report saying that: 'History shows with crystal clarity that an enforcement response cannot get rid of the illicit drug trade…it is a fundamental reality of the economic dynamics of unregulated illegal markets where demand is huge; the opportunity is created and criminal entrepreneurs will always exploit that opportunity. Every dealer or trafficker you arrest, another one immediately fills the void.' Only for this analysis to translate into an ambiguous conclusion that 'Neither supply–side enforcement nor demand reduction can on its own successfully tackle cocaine use.'.
   
   
3. At no point do they get to the heart of the matter to highlight the futility and counter-productive nature of supply side enforcement as evidenced by 40+ years of increasingly expensive failure. No examples are given of countries that have delivered good overall drug policy outcomes (in terms of reduced drug use/harms) from more effective or well resourced supply side enforcement (for the simple reason that there aren't any).

As Transform made clear in our written submission:
10. Decades of supply-side enforcement experience at all scales, from international interdiction efforts to arresting dealers on street corners, demonstrate how its successes can only ever be marginal, temporary and localised. This failure results not from incompetence, flaws in execution, or under-resourcing, but because this approach ignores the economic forces of supply and demand in an unregulated illicit market controlled by criminal profiteers.We also quoted the committee's previous drugs report:
12. Enforcement also has a Darwinian-style ‘survival of the fittest’ effect – it is the most efficient, ruthless, and violent criminal networks that prosper. So the more energetically prohibition is enforced, the worse the ‘cocaine problem’ becomes. In short, as the 2002 HASC drug inquiry report concluded:
“If there is any single lesson from the experience of the last 30 years, it is that policies based wholly or mainly on enforcement are destined to fail.”Whilst the committee isn't bound to agree with any of this well established historical critique of supply side enforcement, they should at least have tackled it and made the case in support of the wider supply side enforcement paradigm. Nowhere in the report is there anything even approaching this sort of discussion. The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Drugs Report of 2003 demonstrated in detail how global prohibition creates much of the harm associated with the production, supply and use of cocaine and heroin. Like the SciTech classification report, and the 2002 HASC drugs inquiry report, it is not mentioned, nor its central findings engaged with.

The same analytical shortcomings and conceptual misunderstandings of supply side enforcement flow through the analysis of crop eradication in South America and the comments on localised UK police operations. Even where useful insights do occasionally appear in the report , in the form of quotes or references, these are never allowed to impinge on the unrelentingly poor analysis of the recommendations and conclusions. It is particularly noteworthy that nowhere in the report is the detailed submissions from the Transnational Institute (arguably the world's leading NGO authority on the international cocaine market and related policy) or the International Drug Policy Consortium quoted or referenced.

In large parts of the report there is evidence that either the inquiry's remit was far to broad, or (looked at another way) that the inquiry has dealt with a series important issues with a woeful lack of depth and detail. Key debates and areas of policy are dealt with in a few paragraphs - a couple of cursory quotes and facts (when far more substantive literature reviews are needed) followed by a rather limp and unconvincing recommendation. Without going into tedious detail on each of the many areas the report attempts to cover, consider for example:

• Prevention and media campaigns - much backslapping about the Government's FRANK campaign supported a single piece of Home Office polling research, but nothing on the wider literature critiquing such mass media campaigns (including that of the WHO 1995 cocaine report, which is not referenced despite its commentary on this point being flagged up in Transform's written submission), or any reference to the ACMD Pathways to Problems report which did consider such efforts in the sort of detail the HASC has conspicuously failed to.
  

• The role of celebrity drug users: Whilst the committee, you suspect rather dissapointedly, acknowledged that 'There is no evidence that celebrity use has made more people turn to cocaine, indeed our witnesses argued strongly against it,' they were, almost laughably, unable to stop themselves from continuing to makes such an assertion regardless, 'However, the seeming propensity of celebrity users to ‘get away with’ using cocaine does contribute to a general trend of glamorising use, as does the social acceptability and normalisation generated by ‘successful’ people who appear to function normally, often holding down high-flying careers, whilst using cocaine.' . This was another example of fitting the facts around a pre-determined narrative (see this appearance of HASC Chair Keith Vaz on channel four news 8 months before the report is published). Guess which part of the report was given most prominence in the press? To find out put cocaine into Google news search...
  
  
• Treatment - a very cursory analysis followed by a call for more residential rehab - but no comparisons of value for money related to treatment outcomes are provided, that would actually support such a call.

• Cocaine harms - The discussion of cocaine related health harms lacks any sophistication, seemly built around the preconceived requirement to make it clear that cocaine is not 'safe'. This seems like a classic straw man, as we are not aware that anyone has been saying that cocaine was 'safe' (no drug is), nor do the committee provide any examples of anyone doing so. The concept that there are a range of cocaine products and range of cocaine using behaviours associated with a spectrum of risks (from negligible to extreme) is largely jettisoned in favour of less-than-useful headline grabbing generalisations about 'lethal' cocaine. Public understanding of risk is not helped by this sort of language - its hard to see what it seeks to achieve, and it goes against much of the more nuanced analysis we have seen from the Sci-Tech committee in 2006,and the HASC in 2002. The discussion of cocaine deaths similarly lacks any breakdown, analysis, or caveats - rather defaulting again to the the 'lethal cocaine' narrative, or cocaine the 'dangerous and lethal drug' (presumably in that order) as HASC chair Vaz describes it in the press release.

There was a similarly limited engagement with the debate on legalisation and regulation. This was a marked contrast to the HASC 2002 drug inquiry which recognised the harms of current policy, and called on the UK Government to initiate a debate on alternatives to prohibition, “including the possibility of legalisation and regulation drugs – to solve the global drugs dilemma” (It is worthy of note that one of the members of the 2002 Committee who supported that recommendation was David Cameron). Steve's contribution is key to the section the Enquiry calls 'Decriminalisation':
Decriminalisation

Several witnesses argued that the supply of and demand for cocaine could not be effectively tackled whilst it remained an illegal drug, but one which for which there was demand. Steve Rolles of Transform Drug Policy told us that:
"When prohibition of something collides with huge demand for it you just create an economic opportunity and illegal criminal entrepreneurs will inevitably exploit the opportunity that it creates."Lord Mancroft agreed:
"We have controlled drugs in this country but you only have to walk within a mile of this palace to realise that the controls do not work, because anywhere on the streets of London you can buy any of these drugs… The way forward is a range somewhere from the way we control alcohol or indeed the most dangerous object in our everyday lives, the motorcar. If you go outside in the street and step in front of a moving motorcar you will find out how dangerous it is, so what do we do? We do not prohibit it. We license the vehicle, we license the users, we made them pass a test, we make them have insurance so if they damage anybody they have to pay up, we tell them how fast they can use it, on which side of the road. That is control."The response to this is the most cursory of engagements with the concept of deterrence associated with punitive enforcement, deploying two quotes, one from John Strang:
However, others told us that there was little evidence that decriminalisation would affect demand, and that in fact it would be likely to increase it. For instance, Professor Strang of the National Addiction Centre told us: "There is no question that the illegality of a substance is a major deterrent to its use…one would have to presume that if legal constraints were taken away the level of use would almost certainly increase."And one from David Nutt, then ACMD chair:
Professor Nutt also said he would be “surprised if making drugs legal would actually reduce use”. He argued that the, at least partial, success of controlling drugs could be seen in the rise in popularity of ‘legal highs’ being bought over the internet: "People are buying drugs over the Internet which are currently legal, presumably because there is a deterrent to getting illegal drugs…The law must influence people to some extent." That is all we get - no evidence provided in support of the above Nutt and Strang comments, and no review of the literature on deterrence, no more discussion or analysis. Nothing. This section just ends, somewhat patronisingly, with the comment:
"There is no doubt that the arguments set out by Transform Drug Policy and Lord Mancroft will continue to be debated."
Finally we were deeply disturbed by the recommendation to increase sentences for users, purely on the basis that current sentences were not long enough for prisoners to finish there prison-based treatment programmes. Again - no evidence is given that such programmes are more cost effective than the various non-prison based cocaine treatment options (which have a pretty poor efficacy record anyway - albeit better than prison, and much cheaper).

Related, is the call for harsher penalties for supply, which reeks of populist posturing and is, once again, unsupported by evidence that it would deliver better outcomes. Both of these calls - which would incur significant expense and add to pressures on an already overstretched prison service - sit entirely at odds with the work taking place as we speak by the Sentencing Advisory Panel, (also mentioned in the Transform submission, but ignored in the report) which is seeking to reduce drug related penalties across the board.

We could go on picking holes in the report - but hopefully, if you have read this far, you will have got the point. This is a dreadful report; ill-conceived and poorly executed, a wasted opportunity and a publication for which the committee should be, quite frankly, embarrassed. It entirely fails to do what Select Committees should be doing; scrutinize a policy area shrouded deliberately in obfuscatory myth and taboo. Instead it keeps politicians protected by the glass bubble of pseudo-science and populist fear mongering. The real tragedy is that this process could have been used to expose a failing policy to useful scrutiny and instead has, in large part, wasted taxpayers' time and money on a report that serves primarily to entrench a hugely counterproductive status quo.

It will surely be ignored and quickly forgotten. Indeed our initial glee at finding our Impact Assessment recommendation had been adopted progressively turned to despair as we read through the rest of its shoddy analysis, which rather undermines the one thing about it worth celebrating.

thanks to Steve for help preparing this analysis This blog has many contributors; blog entries or comments posted to blog are not necessarily the views of Transform Drug Policy Foundation. For official comment or position statements on any given topic, or with any feedback or queries, please contact Transform. Transform Drug Policy Foundation is a registered charity No. 1100518

Categories: News