Review: THE FLEA, The Yard

There’s no escape from the parasites. A bedbug invasion looms in London and there is a flea at Hackney’s Yard Theatre. I’m talking more specifically about The Flea, James Fritz’s new coked-up joyride of a satire which not so much pokes fun at, but hacks and slashes hierarchical English society to shreds.

Imagine Dickens on ketamine. When a telegram boy is caught with a mysterious amount of money on him a conspiracy that scales the grimy depths and gilded highs of late Victorian society and threatens to throw England into disarray. After questioning we learn he has become a rent boy to make ends meet and may or may not have seen a certain future king in an upscale Fitzrovia male brothel.

Naturally the play starts with a tiny flea that just so happened to be responsible for the death of the boy’s father forcing him into prostitution to survive. Up and up the social hierarchy the play traverses, each human character trampling on the one beneath to survive.

Fritz's play, inspired by the real life 1889 Cleveland Street scandal, focuses less on class division and more on the darkness that anchors us as humans, regardless of wealth or status strata. Every one of the carousel of characters will make sacrifices to keep those secrets in the shadows. Everyone has a price.

Surreal chaos reigns supreme in director Jay Miller’s production. Ramped up to eleven with kitschy gusto on every level, set and costume design are surreal fever dream of smoke and seediness. Purple carpet lines the walls whilst characters gallivant in unapologetically camp outfits. Imagine if the new romantics lived on Brick Lane with materials and old costumes raided from the local vintage clothes shop and seemingly stitched together in a narcotic haze. It’s gloriously anarchic stuff.

One scene excels in sewing all of it together: an icy exchange between a slithering, pompous Prince of Wales, caricatured with bright red lipstick manically applied, and Queen Victoria, pale faced and adorned atop a Doric column. Their jagged faces twist and contort as they spit acid at each other. It’s totally unhinged and impossible to resist, especially when the actors, most fresh out of drama school, are having a bona fide blast.

It’s a shame that the coked-up madness doesn’t always trickle down to the rest of the play. Some scenes feel bloated, especially the exposition heavy ones towards the end. The production needs to cut harder and faster to successfully pull off the desired The Young Ones-style Bedlam.

It also doesn’t quite find depth in the grey morality at the play’s core. The rent boys exploited by sexual predators, Sonny Poon Tip’s and Connor Finch’s airheaded aristocrats, who themselves are ostracised by a homophobic society. We never quite feel for the latter as victims, likely because the aristocrats are only ever bumbling caricatures played for laughs. It’s a difficult balance but it can be pulled off.

The Flea plays at The Yard Theatre until 18 November

Photo Credits: Marc Brenner

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