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A question of respect. Discuss
A relationship in black and white: Sir, Ricardo Braithwaite. played by Ansu Kabia with fellow teacher Gillian, Peta Cornish To Sir With Love Wolverhampton Grand **** RICARDO Braithwaite has never taught
before. He's really an electronics engineer who couldn't get a job just
after the war. So taking over the top year of impoverished East End
hooligans in a run-down Stepney Secondary School in 1948 is a bit of a
challenge. Oh, and did I mention that on top of all the other difficulties he faces, he's also black? E R Braithwaite's semi-autobiographical novel has
been lovingly adapted by Ayub Khan Din into a satisfying stage play
which might be a bit sentimental, might have a few something-in-the-eye
moments and simplistic social attitudes, but its heart is in the right
place. Braithwaite, in the play, is played by the
marvellous Ansu Kabia who produces a wonderfully correct English accent
and a glare that could stop clocks. Like his original namesake, who is
now 101 (or 93 according to some sources) and appeared on the opening
night of the tour in Northampton to a standing ovation, the young
Braithwaite ended up in teaching by accident. Not only that, it was a completely alien form of
teaching, revolutionary in 1948, lead by headmaster Florian played with
a sort of shambling charm by Matthew Kelly who is so good in the role
you almost wish the head had been more involved. The head has done away with corporal punishment –
this was in the days of canes and straps remember - and with student
councils lets the children help run the school, or rather run amok as Mr
Weston would no doubt have seen it. Weston is old school, he thinks children should
be seen, never heard, and should pass through education without touching
the sides. He is a teacher and they are pupils, nothing more, to be
kept at arm's length, and, as a sort of history lesson for younger
theatre goers who live in an age when the most innocent of remarks can
bring accusations of racism, he shows us, perhaps to extreme, what
remarks and insults black people had to endure just after the war and
through the 50s.
The staff room also has Clinty, the domestic
science old hand, the rock for everyone, played with jolly good
enthusiasm by Nicola Reynolds and another new member of staff, the slim
and attractive Gillian, played by the . . . slim and attractive
Peta Cornish. She gives us a county set middle class, well-educated
graduate of a finishing school who falls for the dashing, ex-Spitfire
pilot teacher in a budding romance that founders on the rocks of the
meet the parents weekend. Ricky is a good chap, but not the sort of chap
for Gillian her father decides. Then there are the kids led by the bolshy Denham,
played byMykola Allen with that insolent, annoying
but-not-quite-enough-for-justifiable-homicide arrogance that any parent
of teenage children will recognise. The female leader, the loudest of the bunch, is
Monica, or bleedin' Monica as she was probably better known. She is a
tearaway, one of ten children, whose father is no stranger to court
appearances and pleas of mitigation. Harriet Ballard has a disillusioned, angry,
directionless teenager off to a tee – along with a voice that could
crack an anvil. Strongest of the girls though is poetry reaading
Pamela, played by Heather Nicol, the first to see in Mr Braithwaite
something she has not seen in other teachers. She is the first to try to
please him in class and then the first to develop a schoolgirl crush on
Sir. Then there is Seales, the class novelty; the
product of a white mother and a black father and such is the view of
black people that when family tragedy strikes him none of the girls can
go to see him because of the threat to their reputations by going in the
house of a black man. So for a black, untrained, non-teacher to
transform the top class from a horde of barbarians to something passing
as civilised young adults must have made a war spent in the air fighting
Fokkers and Messerschmitts seem a bit of a breeze. These were socially deprived, uneducated,
children, failed by the system, living amid crime and poverty, and
suffering the worse poverty of all, poverty of ambition. Perhaps Edward Ricardo Braithwaite, the original,
explains it better that anyone: “I connected with them purely out of my
own wish to survive! “It struck me one day that the children didn't
have any respect for themselves and this was why they had no respect for
other people and I seized upon that idea. I challenged them to respect
themselves.”
I don't know if I changed any lives or not but something did happen between them and me, which was quite gratifying. I didn't keep in touch with my former pupils. I had gone to the school to do a particular job and I felt that I'd completed my work with them. However, one of the strange things about
life is how often circumstances repeat themselves. I'd be walking to
work and people would come up to me and say “Hi ya, Sir!” There came a
point when I was “Sir” to the parents as well as to their children.” The play is about that transformation, not only
of the children but of their teachers, not only Braithewaite but Weston,
Clinty and, perhaps the only casualty, Gillian. All right is schmaltzy, sugar-coated sentiment
but if it leaves you with that warm glow of happiness inside as you head
off to the car park, who cares. We need a heart warming tale every now
and again, particularly one based on a true experience. Mike Britton has designed a remarkably realistic
set – a nostalgic treat, or nightmare of course, to anyone educated in a
solid Victorian school that survived the war. The stage could have
been my old junior school with its painted brick walls, nicotine stained
white above a municipal maroon base painted high enough to capture any
child height grubby finger marks before they could reach the once
pristine upper walls. The similarity with my Lancashire youth ended
though with the broken windows along with a stark skyline of chimneys
which just added to the desolation of the East End school. The
classroom was represented by a wall of blackboards descending from the
flies when needed and twelve desks and chairs, while the staffroom was a
tea trolley, table and Weston's easy chair. Everything was moved, changed, rearranged
and taken on and off by the pupils, all twelve of them, with a jive to
music of the time thrown in. It was a clever touch by director Mark
Babych, making scene changes lively and adding to a cracking pace which
in turn made the dramatic pasues even more effective. Apparently there were 200 people in the audience
for this Touring Consortium Theatre Company production who had never
been to the theatre before, thanks to the ambassadors and outreach
programme the consortium has developed. This was top quality theatre and if there is any
justice that should be 200 people who will be back for more. 26-10-13 Roger Clarke
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