Review: Tales From The Front Line Episodes 1 & 2, Talawa Theatre Company
Talawa Theatre Company bring us a new online series, using verbatim interviews that explore the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and other pressing 2020 matters on Black key workers.
These interesting and informative shorts follow a teacher and an NHS recovery worker, whose stories and experiences over the past year are told by Jo Martin (Doctor Who; Casualty) and Sapphire Joy (J’Ouvert, Theatre503; Casualty). The use of two familiar faces to tell the stories of the key workers is effective because sadly, people are often more likely to listen to a voice that they know, than one they don’t. Both are also Black actors meaning that what they are telling you as an audience carries more weight.
Whilst I don’t yet know what the other four stories will be, the selection of these two as the first ones is clever. They both tell similar stories but are the antithesis of one another in the way that they are done, ensuring that you watch both stories.
In the first, the teacher’s story (set in a school) is told in a simple way. With Jo Martin relaying the tale, we discover a different side to what teachers have had to deal with, questions from students and how they have had to guide young minds through things that, unusually for teachers, they didn’t have the answer to. Interpretive dance is used at certain points when a little emphasis is required but otherwise, the story is the main focus.
This contrasts with the second story, which is much angrier, heartfelt and bitter. It is a story that we are all so familiar with; it is the story of why we clapped on our doorsteps for three months. Sapphire Joy has a pre-recorded voiceover to run alongside the film, in which she doesn’t speak but carries out certain actions that the NHS recovery worker did. This one plays with costume a little more and it makes it slightly more poignant that, when she gets angrier about what has happened, her costume changes, followed by the set and the lighting, in order to reflect her mental struggles as well. It is highly effective.
The telling of these stories is vitally important for progress to be made for diversity and equality and I, for one, am glad to have watched the telling stories of these brave key workers.
The first two films in the series are available now here, with another two coming in January and the last two in March 2021.
**** Four stars
Reviewed by: Emma Littler
