The promotional leaflet tells me that when attending Derailed at Slung Low the pay what is right for you theatre in Leeds I am not going to see theatrical performance, but a band called Little Soldier, but they are in fact a theatre company playing at being a rock band. Perhaps in the model of the early punk scene they are not really musicians, well one of them, Thomas, is, but he lives in Glasgow and can’t attend rehearsals. The other performers are trying, but with only one song, which they don’t really understand it is not looking promising.
But it is promising.
The rock band analogy works well, if only because as a rock band Little Soldier are not as bad as they would have you believe in their publicity. If you can play guitar you can play guitar and no amount of acting is going to disguise that.
I wonder why they would want to make a point about the quality of the bands musicianship. Perhaps it is an analogy for the way in which the way in which people voted in the European Union Referendum? Regardless of how you voted, did the campaigns really build an understanding of what the consequences of your vote could be? Were the campaigns just like a band that cannot really play, performing a song that they didn’t really understand? Perhaps?
Without making a political point Derailed sets out to examine this question through the impact the result could have on a group of people who just happen to be in a band.
Regardless of how good or bad Little Soldier are as a rock band we are witnessing their last gig, because as a bunch of foreigners they are getting ready to leave the United Kingdom and return to their European Union home country. But home as a concept is complex; isn’t it where the heart is? These people who arrived in the United Kingdom full of hope and dreams and who have created homes here now find those dreams and plans for building a life here derailed.
Like a truly ‘dedicated fan’ I have my ticket and a place close to the stage. The location at Slung Low in a railway arch reminds me of my first rock concert back when I was a sixth-former and went with a group of friends to see UK Subs in a cellar bar in the centre of Leeds. I was a naïve teenager from the suburbs, not quite sure what I was letting myself in for and hoping, like an inbetweener that my complete lack of cool would not be discovered by the genuine punk crowd.
Back then I didn’t get to stay until the end of the UK Subs it was after all a Sunday and Monday was a school day, so I missed out on an invitation to the after-show party that night. No so with Little Soldier, no sooner has the concert started than we are transferred to the after-show party and the reminisces start to flow as readily as the wine.
You don’t need to have been them or like me a former expatriate worker to relate to the stories the actors recount, they are talking about all the things that make us human, the good times and the bad that are involved in living. I understand exactly what these foreigners mean when they describe how they have travelled to the UK with the hope of being able to fulfil a dream, what they were prepared to leave behind, a moment which is made all the more poignant by a live Skype call to a genuine relative in Spain.
But what they are talking about is how our own plans no matter how simple they might be can be derailed by the actions of people we have never met. Which is what has happened to many people who travelled to the UK from the European Union in hope and have had their hopes and plans altered as the result of a referendum result.
Derailed could be an exercise in melancholy autobiographical reminiscing, or an overt political statement from people with an axe to grind, but instead it is great entertainment. Derailed is also enlightening. Throughout Derailed the performers suck you into their lives, building a relationship with to you so that you end up caring about the characters, and start to understand the impact our national referendum decision has had on the people we have welcomed to the United Kingdom. As we enter a new period in our national story I hope that we do not forget to maintain that welcome for the people who have come here from other countries and have added to our quality of life.