Review: Extremism (The Cockpit Theatre)

Review by Cat Wiltshire

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There's something a little intimidating about going to see a play with a title like Extremism - even if you don’t know what it’s about, you get the sense that it's not going to be the easiest watch. With a quick read of the flyer, all suspicions that this would be anything but an intense 60 minutes went out the window. ‘One student has disappeared from school; nobody quite knows why, but everybody has an opinion’. When a classmate is suddenly removed under suspicion of radicalisation, the teenagers left behind are forced to make sense of what happened, and it doesn't take long for rumours, assumptions and accusations to take over. Extremism places young voices at the centre of a difficult conversation about identity, fear and division in modern Britain. As friendships are tested and previously hidden prejudices rise to the surface, the classroom becomes a pressure cooker. Bold, provocative, and intentionally challenging, this is not a play that allows its audience to sit comfortably at the sidelines, and there are moments when watching it feels deeply uncomfortable and is meant to.

Written by political playwright and activist Anders Lustgarten, who describes himself as an anarchist, Extremism was originally commissioned for the National Theatre’s Connections program and first performed as part of its 2017 festival. The play grew directly out of Lustgarten’s research into organisations and procedures established in response to the government's Prevent duty, introduced through the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. This legislation placed a duty on schools to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. Lustgarten explored what this responsibility could mean for pupils, teachers and families, extensively workshopping the play with a Year 11 class over the course of a year.

The result is deliberately less concerned with terrorism itself than with what happens when suspicion enters the classroom and how quickly fear, prejudice and assumptions about identity can take hold of young people. Lustgarten himself explains that as the play was originally written for young performers with little experience aged 13  - 19, he doesn't put too much weight on one character to carry the performance. This gives a great result of having each character an equal amount of responsibility on their shoulders to convey the story with no particular lead. It leaves the audience bouncing between the fast dialogue of the many characters.

Under Lucie Lutte’s direction, Extremism feels deliberately immediate and uncomfortable. Lutte, founder of Limitless Presents and a Black British Theatre Award-nominated writer, takes a play first commissioned for youth performers in 2017 and gives it a renewed urgency without allowing its political subject matter to overwhelm the human drama. The action unfolds with escalating tension as the group of teenagers attempt to understand why their classmate has been removed from school under suspicion of radicalisation.

Rather than presenting the characters as straightforward representations of opposing viewpoints, Lutte allows their fear, ignorance and prejudice to emerge through their interactions, drawing the audience into the unfolding events. It wasn’t all intensity, doom and gloom, however, with plenty of humour thrown in to allow the audience to laugh and cringe in equal parts as we remember how our own viewpoints looked as teenagers. The result is an increasingly claustrophobic classroom in which rumours gather momentum and seemingly casual comments expose much deeper divisions.

The simple classroom layout on the in-the-round stage space adds to this claustrophobic sense of doom, as I felt more than simply an onlooker, but a part of the classroom where the madness was taking place. The few tables and chairs scattered about were the only set, and the contents of an average Year 11 student’s schoolbag were the only props. The action never leaves the classroom, and we are never given the answers to what is happening outside of that room. This is not a problem because it soon becomes obvious that the real extremism is what is unfolding inside and not whatever their friend who was removed from class is involved in. Perhaps Lutte’s strongest decision is to trust both Lustgarten’s writing and her young cast, resisting temptation to provide the audience with easy answers to the questions the play raises.

Limitless Presents has said that what initially attracted the company to Extremism was precisely that it ‘trusted young people to ask difficult questions’ and that philosophy is evident in the production. Lutte keeps the teenagers at the centre of the story. The cast did an amazing job of allowing arguments to overlap, alliances to shift and uncomfortable silences to carry as much weight as more explosive confrontations. I was very impressed with their ability to jump from funny moments to intense ones without feeling forced or hurried, and like any good performers, I quickly forgot that they were playing much younger characters and could quite honestly believe I had a window into a real classroom. 

The way the cast are truly connected and play off each other is a joy to watch. Shukri Hassan as Suhayla and Annie Blomfield as Melina played the main confrontation brilliantly, leaving me squirming uncomfortably in my chair in horror at the realism of their clash. Samuel, a teenage boy who only speaks in the Klingon language from the Star Trek franchise as a defence mechanism after being severely bullied and finding himself unable to communicate in other ways, is played by Felix Price, who does an amazing job of getting his tongue around the fictional language. Whilst Chadrack Mbuini as Jordan does a stellar rendition of everything being a teenage boy was about, so realistically you’ll forget he's not actually 15.

Extremism is a thought-provoking and unsettling play that asks difficult questions without attempting to hand its audience simple answers. Almost a decade after it was first written, its exploration of radicalisation, prejudice, identity and consequences of suspicion feels like it could have been written today. At times uncomfortable and confrontational, it is also witty, capturing the complicated dynamics between young people as fear and uncertainty begin to expose divisions beneath the surface. This production at the Cockpit succeeds in making those themes immediate, leaving plenty to think about long after the final scene. For me, the staging was perfectly suited to the play, the performances across the cast were excellent, and Lucie Lutte’s direction brought everything together with confidence and clarity.

Extremism plays at The Cockpit until October 2nd. Tickets from https://tickets.thecockpit.org.uk/sales/shows/extremism-by-anders-lustgarten