'Essential and necessary' "Riots" transfers to Tottenham Theatre

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Sylvester Brown in The Riots at the Tricycle Theatre Photo: ©Alastair Muir

'Essential theatre, expertly done' Mail On Sunday

'Gripping and necessary' The Guardian

'Makes you think without making your mind up for you' The Independent

The Riots, showing at the Tricycle Theatre since last month will be transferring to the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham for a short season from  4th - 14th January.

In the absence of any full public inquiry into the August riots, the Tricycle commissioned Gillian Slovo to create a verbatim piece on the events and their possible causes. And, if the result can hardly be expected to provide any definitive answers, it asks the right questions in a way that is clear, gripping and necessary.

From tweets by taxi drivers, to moment-by-moment accounts by riot police, it builds a real-time picture of the riots as they unfolded. And then, from interviews with politicians, police, teachers, lawyers, community leaders, as well as victims and on-lookers,The Riots sets out  analyse what happened, why it happened, and what we should do towards making a better future for ourselves and our city.

The evening is in two distinct halves. In the first we get witness accounts, with film footage and street maps, of events in Tottenham on the night of 6 August. One thing emerges strongly: the failure of the police to inform Mark Duggan's family of either the facts or the circumstances of his shooting. This was the match that lit the bonfire.

But we then hear from the police themselves about the pressures they were under, from members of the Tottenham community caught up in the riots, and from both the victims and perpetrators of the looting. Everyone has a different perspective, but a youth worker puts it succinctly when he says: "You've got the legitimate anger; and then you've got, obviously, people who jump on that anger."

In the second, more reflective half a range of MPs, social workers and top police officers speculate on the underlying causes.

You get a plurality of views, but what emerges is a widespread sense of people, and not just the young, seeking revenge on an unjust society.

'It is fascinating', says the Guardian

(Large parts of this post are taken directly from The Guardian's Review. The picture is from The Daily Telegraph)