Getting Here

Eastern Angles Theatre at the Seagull Theatre, Lowestoft.

Review published in Eastern Daily Press, 22 July 2009.

Getting Here

Eastern Angles have always tapped into the rich vein of cultural history that is the lifeblood of our region. This new one brings a totally wonderful set of variations.

Writer and director Ivan Cutting has chosen the promenade style of theatre.

He has woven together spoken evidence from Suffolk’s Polish, Afro-Caribbean and Portuguese communities to make a moving and at times very funny study into multiculturalism and diversity and the ties that bind us as human beings.

Using two rooms and a corridor, the audience moves with the story. The action unfolds around and among them, bringing characters to life so close that it’s impossible not to be drawn in, caring and sympathising.

Catarina (Chara Jackson) and Jose (Pedro Reichert) a young Portuguese couple arrive in England. Arrivals carry baggage, naturally. But there’s also symbolic baggage of memories and things immigrants either cling to or abandon as they integrate into communities.

Beata Majka is the Air Hostess with a secret, Noeleen Comiskey the Polish stowaway and Ade Sapara a superb pilot and God-like figure who himself “collects other people’s baggage in the hope of finding his own”.

It is great fun and 70 minutes of well invested time in a small but powerful theatrical triumph.