Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Nick Sheedy, Adam Nicholls, Callum Forbes, Faye Caddick, Samantha Walton.
There are two ways to look at the situation imposed on students graduating from University as we stumble headlong along the 21st Century road, one train of thought regarded by those who perpetuate the myth that education should be paid for in excess of debt by those receiving it and the more honest approach of those who understand that by burdening the individual with liability that far outweighs the gain, is utterly and irresponsibly wrong.
Just because the person has the capacity to learn, to be inquisitive, that society, Government and the percentage of those who see the chance to make money out of misery, should saddle the young with mountains of debt is a warning sign to anybody that it stifles creativity, that it makes a whole generation of people question the motives of their elders and by doing so creates to stigma of The British Idles.
Written and directed by Naughty Corner Productions’ Callum Forbes, The British Idles focuses on the lives of five graduates who have been left behind, the once gained assuredness of how they want to live their lives, the feeling that they could achieve anything if their purpose was true, now relegated, downgraded by a system that wants to stifle personal ambition and sees life as almost a way of kicking the once ordered, natural way of life into touch and imposing a set of rules that are unbalanced, in direct opposition to the way that encouragement and to the benefit of all should be adhered to.
The play is also radical in its portrayal, the openness of sex within friendship groups, the uncertainty of relationships forming because the world is fractured along divisions of hate and jealousy rather uniting in a common cause, the old portrayed in life as those who have taken every possible future that their grandchildren might profit mentally from.
It is the argument set out that sees the country’s young embracing the once demonised and satirised left, the true face of socialism is not that it wants to bankrupt the country but to fix what money cannot purchase, self respect, opportunity without age old privilege and the chance for someone, regardless of race, background, age, social status or gender to achieve something that does not typify the stereotype, of only working for minimum wage filling shelves when they have earned the right to have a B.A. or M.A. after their name.
An insightful play by Callum Forbes, The British Idles is a reminder that the world should not depend on profit of money to be considered successful.
Ian D. Hall