The Real Britain - Michael Coveney review

Something extraordinary happened in Southend on Friday night.

East 15 Acting School opened a new plant and 250 trainee actors occupied a former church in a massive theatre event about asylum, immigration and identity.

Former RSC, Bristol Old Vic and Abbey Theatre director Leon Rubin, now the artistic director of East 15, with associate Michael Fry, galvanised the entire school and technical staff in the event and even arranged, with their partners at the University of Essex, a discussion curtain-raiser with a guest appearance by honorary graduate Juliet Stevenson.

Juliet stayed on for the show, too, as did veteran academic and former National Theatre associate John Russell Brown, the Mayor of Southend, the Vice-Chancellor of the University and other bigwigs, proud parents and East 15 supporters.

The huge Grade II listed former Clifftown United Reform Church, situated in a pleasant area of the town (there aren’t that many), has been completely gutted and re-configured by architects Thomas Ford and Partners as a labyrinth of amazingly large and varied theatre spaces, corridors, bars and other facilities.

It’s one of the most spectacularly brilliant architectural conversions I’ve ever seen.

Inside, we wandered from zone to zone down the years as the students enacted tableaux from the Roman invasion, Irish and Jewish immigrant communities, Notting Hill in the late 1950s, a sort of “Ken Campbell” room (supervised by the School of Night’s Sean McCann) where a refugee klezmer band had mysteriously fetched up on Southend pier, and even a sex-trafficking studio with some grimly graphic pornographic exploitation scenes.

The standard of design was incredibly high, the energy and passion of the actors overwhelming.

The whole two-hour show, a sort of animated elaboration of Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice at the National last year,  ended in the main body of the hall with a rousing, reggae dance version of “I Vow to Thee, My Country” with Gustav Holst’s great patriotic tune bending easily to every impatient demand.

East 15 retains its base in Loughton, Essex, but has dramatically expanded with this Clifftown project and a new film school over the past three three years.

One only wonders why they don’t now form a professional company to take the training work straight into the mainstream, like all great companies once attached to drama schools — the Maly, the Moscow Art, the Bristol Old Vic.

Juliet Stevenson and John Russell Brown were as gob-smacked by it all as was I.

Perhaps the show can be transported direct to a venue like the BAC in Battersea, or one of the large fringe venues for a week during the Edinburgh Festival.