Fantastic take on history's mistakes

There's no Planet B or the History of  World Backwards

Tricycle Theatre

Preview by Tom Foot

ROB Newman – the stand-up comedian, author and political activist – has put together an extraordinarily sharp one-man show at the Tricycle Theatre.
Best-remembered for his role in the BBC’s Mary Whitehouse Experience, Newman formed a double-act with comedian David Baddiel – they were the first comedy act to sell out Wembley Arena in 1993.
Newman’s career continued with a series of anti-establishment campaigns including support for the Liverpool Dockers and covering the anti-globalisation protests in Seattle for Newsnight in 1999.
Bestowed with a heavyweight social consciousness, this play/
musical/stand-up act marches back through history from 2006 to the “sunset of recorded time” chronicling a series of human errors and social injustice.
Historical figures such as William Shakespeare, Sylvia Pankhurst and Jesus Christ encounter their own reverse enlightenment. Newman imagines what each would be doing had they experienced the future as their past. Shakespeare writes a play based on the Spanish Civil War, the Levellers unearth a document from the Black Panthers.
Newman’s style is to ridicule rather than rants; he is more a mocking Byron than an earnest Shelley figure, a Touchstone than a Jacques. He mimics dozens of historical characters with finely tuned accents periodically bursting into witty songs accompanied by the creepy twangs of his ukulele.
I’ve been sceptical of all productions staged during the World Cup. Coupled with this unbearable heat, it really has been the graveyard shift – no programme was issued for this press night and no publicity shots were taken.
But Newman’s intricate, original show deserves a better billing. It is a worthy addition to The Tricycle’s great tradition of political theatre. Newman’s politics are rooted in Marxist convention, except his “locomotive of history” is in reverse. He spares no time for dull tales of kings and queens, imperialists and potentates. But neither is he particularly concerned with uprisings or agitation from below.
No Planet B threatens an ecological disaster, bleakly predicting a second Ice Age. And few will argue with him.

Until July 15
020 7328 1000

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