Blood on Your Hands by Grace Joy Howarth. Southwark Playhouse, the Little, 77 Newington Causeway, London SE1 to 03 February 2024. 2** William Russell.

Blood on Your Hands by Grace Joy Howarth. Southwark Playhouse, the Little, 77 Newington Causeway, London SE1 to 03 February 2024.

2** William Russell.

“There is blood all over the place in this slaughterhouse drama.’”

A good cast do their best with this confused play – it has things to say but hits out in all directions – but fail to save the day. Set in a slaughterhouse – Kensingtone gore is all over the stage and some of the cast by the end of the evening – it begins as a piece about animal rights with female actrivists charging all over the place then we meet two young men, who work in the slaughterhouse. Dan (Phiip John Jones) is a still at staying at home Jack the lad who likes a drink, sometimes puts things up his nose, is friendly to anybody and has a girlfriend who is one of the activists, which causes him some difficulty at work. Kostyantyn (ShannonSmith) is a Unkrainian refugee, a vet back home, who has left his pregnant wife and family to find a better life here and has ended up in the only job he can get. They meet, become friendly and their scenes together work well. Jones creates a splendid boy who has never grown up who realises, when a more successful schoolmate turns up, that he is wasting his life, while Smith shows how Kostyantyn has problems with the world he has found himself in, with the language and trying not to tell his wife – mobile phones have a lot to answer for – that the better life in England has not been found. But then we get the wife back in Ukraine, a touching performance by Kateryna Hryhorenko, trying to find out what is going on while projections of scenes from the preparations for war – the action takes place two weeks before the invasion - are projected. Add to this the arrival of the old schoolmate, played by Jordan Kalaw,i putting the knife, verbally into Dan, with Liv Jekyll as that activist girlfriend doing much the same and the boss of the plant exploiting his labour force ruthlessly. Meanwhile Dan and Kostyantyn dismember the animals, go drinking and have different problems with the management. There are half a dozen plays struggling to get out before our eyes. The virtually illegible programme printed in far too small type on blue paper does attempt to disclose what director Anastasia Bunce was trying to do with her material which, if it could have been read before hand, might have helped but had there been an interval this is one of those shows whose post interval audience would have been smaller. This is a pity because in there are at least two stories worth telling and Philip John Jones , Shannon Smith and Kateryna Hryhorenko seize the chances ther are given very well indeed. But at times the words bloody and awful do come to mind.

Cast

Shannon Smith – Kostyantyn.

Philip John Jones – Dan.

Liv Jekyl – Eden.

Kateryna Hryhorenko – Nina.

Joradn El-Balawi – The man/Callum/Damien.

Creatives

Director – Anastasia Bunce.

Set Designer – Ahmet Buyukcinar.

Lighting Designer – Abraham Walkling-Lea.

Video Designer – Alex Powell.

Sound Design – The Araby Bazaar.

Costume Designer –Leah Kelly.

Movement Directir - Tessa Guerrero.