Nottage wrote her play after two years of extensive research in and around the city of Reading in Pennsylvania; this city was reported to be one of the poorest in the USA with a poverty level of 40%. Reading saw a dizzying decline after 2007 with it's industrial jobs being decimated through factory closures and companies relocating. Her findings which were later made into this play hold no great surprises - demoralized workers feeling used and abandoned by business but with no redress - through political or social channels - other than blame the wrong factors for the job losses.
I cannot help but feel that the play - although involving in an Arthur Miller-esque way - is quite basic and has possibly been over-praised for being what it is. Fault lines are alluded to but are left hanging, certain characters are given more grace and favour treatment than others while issues slowly slink back to make room for the plot where we know from flash-forwarding That Something Bad Happened.
Two young recently-released prisoners are interviewed by the same probation officer and in these interviews they both mention that they have seen each other around town and are worried how that will be for their rehabilitation. We learn that they are African-American Chris and Caucasian Jason both of whom Have Done Something Bad eight years before. They were friends having grown up together as their mothers had been best friends and co-workers in the same pipe factory.
Their mothers Cynthia and Tracey - along with their ex-hippy friend Jessie -have a strong bond from working side by side for years and enjoying the after-work camaraderie in the nearby saloon run by Stan, an ex-Vietnam veteran - yes that old staple - who also worked with them until a factory injury made him a bar-keep instead. Hovering in the background is also Brucie, Cynthia's ex-husband and Chris' father, once a powerful union man who after one too many brushes with the Man is now a junkie floating through life.
The plot turns on a supervisor job at the factory that both Cynthia and Tracey apply for; Cynthia gets the promotion and that, almost imperceptibly, starts the rot in their friendship as Tracey harbours a very quiet resentment at having been passed over. Suddenly, Cynthia finds her new job is in fact Nessus' shirt - no sooner has she started the job then the management start pushing for the workers having to re-apply for their jobs, cuts in pay and longer working hours - all under the guise of streamlining productivity, and claiming their hands are tied.
Cynthia tries to keep her friends updated on all that she knows but soon realizes that the promotion probably only happened so the managers would have a patsy to filter bad news down to the shop-floor. Tracey's anger at Cynthia catches fire and she turns against her, especially when word gets out that the management is targeting Hispanics to fill the jobs of the by-now striking workforce. It's a situation where the only winners are the unseen managers; the former workers are left jobless, the factory vanishes to Mexico, bitter resentment is in the air when out of nowhere, a Bad Thing Happens.
There was much to admire in Nottage's play and she certainly addresses the febrile nature of workers who in the past few years, through snake-oil selling, media mis-information and their own intolerance, find themselves all too ready to lash out at anything and everything. But I also found her plot to be fairly routine and also fairly predictable - I could sense who was going to be the victim of The Bad Thing Happening but to Nottage's credit, she changed the victim at the last second. It did however lead to a fairly obvious and clunky final image of the victim of these stupid times being the good person or people damaged forever,
Lynette Linton has certainly delivered a production that echoes the solid metal pipes and girders that tower over Frankie Bradshaw's bar-room set but it is also a monotone world where no humour is allowed to penetrate and ultimately the grim atmosphere became too one-note; as I said earlier, I was reminded of Arthur Miller's A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE while watching it - but unlike Miller, Nottage can offer no illumination of her character's lives - they are hard-working and noble or hard-working and venal with no contrast or shade. I wonder how she would have portrayed her unseen bosses? In this, I was also reminded of Matthew Lopez' THE INHERITANCE which was unafraid to plant a Trump-supporting Republican right at the centre of the play but also had the awareness to not make him an out-and-out villain as most playwrights would do.
SWEAT does boast some remarkable performances: Clare Perkins delivers a strong Cynthia, who watches lifelong friendships evaporate while trying to do right by them, Martha Plimpton is a coruscating Tracey whose harbouring a lifetime of resentments boils over scarring everyone including herself and Stuart McQuarrie as Stan, a man who tries to keep his bar a safe haven for all but who cannot stop the rising anger and violence from it's doors.
There were also good performances from Patrick Gibson and Osy Ikhile as the two sons who in a moment of madness assign themselves the roles that society was just waiting to throw on them, and Leanne Best as Tracey and Cynthia's friend Jessie, who allows herself occasionally to remember the idealism of her teenage years before booze overwhelms the pain.
It certainly isn't the first US play to be shown up as somewhat over-lauded in transferring to London but it is one that I suspect will niggle away at me. What I did wonder was, would a similar play about the miner's strike or any number of factories that have closed down in the north of England or in Wales find a home on Shaftesbury Avenue or is SWEAT 'allowable' as it's Rust Belt Americana can be viewed as separate from our own angry, vindictive under-class?
I also cannot help but wonder how a production about the corrosive effects of capitalism can charge £107.25 for Premium Seating?
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