BWW Reviews: THE RAGGED TROUSERED PHILANTHROPISTS - IZIGWILI EZIDLAKAZELAYOLA, Hackney Empire, May 12 2012

There are a handful of cultural icons that have escaped my attention, despite advice from many quarters: I have never seen an episode of The Sopranos; I have never gone skiing; and I have never read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. Isango Ensemble's version of Robert Tressell's early twentieth century call for action (in rep at the Hackney Empire until 3 June) confirms that I really ought to get the book read.

Stephen Lowe's transplanting of the tale from the South Coast of England to apartheid-era South Africa gives the production a couple of opportunities that it takes to the full. The black workers' social location at the bottom of capitalism's food chain is exacerbated by their physical location: corralled into bantustans, there's is a service class treated as little more than human machines. But, despite the inhuman conditions in which they toiled (in turn bullied and patronised by bosses as keen to stab each other in the back as they are to drive a little more surplus value out of their employees) the male decorators and female maids hold on to their indomitable human spirit singing songs of liberation from both African and Western traditions. Highlights include a raunchy and raucous of "Your Feet's Too Big" and a beautiful, if hilarious, version of their country's national anthem.

For all the laughs and sublime harmonies, Mark Donford-May's production never loses sight of Tressell's central message, articulated through the brother and sister radicals, Solomon and Minnie (Mhlekazi "Whawha" Moisea and Pauline Malefane). That message is that the interests of workers and their bosses (and, beyond them, their employers) are not the same; that only the discipline that comes from unionising can improve the lot of workers; and that workers' rights can only be gained in struggle - a struggle that comes at a cost.

As today's austerity bites harder and harder on public services with low-paid workers repeatedly told that their jobs and pensions can no longer be afforded (by men and women who live in homes that cost millions with salaries in six or more figures), the ragged trousered philanthropists whose work kept the previous centuries' elite in comfort, are as much with us today - in England, in Europe, in Africa, in America, in Asia - as they were when Tressell's anger was committed to paper over 100 years ago. The question still gnaws - what are YOU going to do about it?