MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Jellyfish is a pointed drama on attitudes towards disabilities, says MAYER WAKEFIELD
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PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
Jellyfish
Bush Theatre, London
THE BUSH theatre’s current season goes from strength to strength. After the visceral intensity of Arinze Kene’s Misty and a timely revival of Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking comes Ben Weatherill’s touching Jellyfish.
All three plays are authentic and tender explorations of marginalised working-class communities. But where the first two focus on the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in London, Weatherill takes us to the shores of Skegness to bring society’s stigmas around disabilities to the surface.
It's there that the hardened Agnes (Penny Layden) and her bubbly 28-year-old daughter Kelly (Sarah Gordy), who has Down’s syndrome, have settled into an insular and loving pattern of life which is suddenly upset by the arrival of comic-loving arcade supervisor Neil (Ian Bonar) into Kelly’s universe.
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