Theatre reviews: Milkshake

Milkshake, Oran Mor, Glasgow ****

Human Nurture, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh ****

Two men, one room, and a 50-minute conversation that tries to bridge one of the yawning gaps in 21st century British politics – that’s the formula for both Rob Drummond’s latest Play, Pie and Pint drama Milkshake, and for the Theatre Centre’s current touring show Human Nurture.

In Milkshake, the two protagonists are a Conservative MP, Arthur, and a young under-employed graduate called Owen, who has thrown a milkshake over Arthur in protest against recent benefits cuts. Arthur is now a justice minister, with a special interest in restorative justice, so he is keen to be seen to resolve their differences through mediation, with a smiling photo opportunity at the end. Owen, though, has different ideas.

Both Ewan Miller as Owen and Richard Conlon as Arthur make a superb job of evoking the huge political gulf between a young, educated working-class Scot who has probably rarely even met a Tory, never mind debated one; and a very different kind of Scot who has decided to throw in his lot with the Conservatives.

Arthur, in particular, is a fascinating creation, beautifully portrayed by Conlon: on one hand a perfectly normal human being, desperately worried about his young sons’ anxieties over his safety; on the other, a man complicit in a repellent political effort to conceal the link between his party’s policies and real human suffering and death. And if there’s no real resolution in Drummond’s play, there is a searing insight in Finn den Hertog’s intense production into how the level of political debate deteriorates and coarsens when those with differing views so rarely meet and negotiate face to face; as these two are forced to do here.

If the political landscape created by social media is a largely unspoken presence in Milkshake, it is an explicit theme of Ryan Calais Cameron’s blistering two-hander Human Nurture, co-produced by the Theatre Centre in Deptford and Sheffield Theatres. Calais Cameron is one of the rising stars of black British theatre; and in Human Nurture – directed by Rob Watt, and performed with tremendous, poignant force by Lucas Button and Justice Ritchie, with MC Neeta Sari on sound – he explores the fracturing relationship between two young men, now 18, who once lived together as children in care, in a northern English city.

Runaku, formerly known as Roger, is black, and is thriving after finding a cultural home with a black foster family in the south. Harry, who is white, stayed on in care, and is now living alone in a bleak flat, and making friends whose political views – increasingly obvious in his online exchanges – leave Runaku appalled and frightened – so much so that he turns up at Harry’s flat, on his friend’s 18th birthday, with a desperate intention of trying to rebuild their friendship before it is too late.

What emerges from Calais Cameron’s play, over the next hour, is a terrifying portrait of an atomised society where working-class solidarity and community has become a thing of the past, and where the only sense of “belonging” available to these young men is one based on race and culture: relatively progressive on Runaku’s side, filled with bitter resentment and hatred on Harry’s. The play’s pivotal question is whether the personal history of brotherly love between Harry and Runaku is going to be enough to overcome the tragic gulf set between them, by the times in which they live.

Milkshake at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 22-26 March, and The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 29 March-2 April; Human Nurture completes its UK tour at Soho Theatre, London, 22-26 March.

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Theatre reviews: Milkshake | Human Nurture