By James Hadley in London

There's nothing like a bit of controversy being stirred up by a piece of theatre, is there? In my opinion, it's an important part of theatre's role to sometimes present challenging provocations to the status quo. And it's something that happens too rarely in our cautious, box office income focussed times.

Happily, the most recent production to open at the National Theatre - which is often seen as one of the most traditional of London's theatre venues - has stirred up debate around the issue of immigration and racism in London. By James Hadley in London

There's nothing like a bit of controversy being stirred up by a piece of theatre, is there? In my opinion, it's an important part of theatre's role to sometimes present challenging provocations to the status quo. And it's something that happens too rarely in our cautious, box office income focussed times.

Happily, the most recent production to open at the National Theatre - which is often seen as one of the most traditional of London's theatre venues - has stirred up debate around the issue of immigration and racism in London. The play is England People Very Nice' by Richard Bean, directed by Nicholas Hytner, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre. Its subject is the waves of immigration that have shaped London's East End. Bethnal Green in particular. It starts with the arrival of the French Huguenot Protestants, and continues through the arrival of Irish, Jewish, Bengali, and Somalian refugees over the last few hundred years.

I love a good historical pageant. The thing that's riled people about this production is that it's a very broad comedy - in the style of 'Little Britain' or the 'Carry On Laughing' films. It deals entirely in generalised racial stereotypes. It would be hard not to in such a broad-sweeping history, and this type of comedy is based on comic types, so basing the characters on carefully studied individuals of a variety of ethnic backgrounds would probably have flattened much of the humour. A recurring scene throughout the play has a cockney barmaid stand behind the bar and start the scene by complaining 'F**ing French' (or whatever the most recent wave of immigrants are), and some of the key issues around the particular cultural influx are then explored in the following section. But with more levity than historical accuracy - for instance, in the section on Irish immigrants, a one-eyed child, fathered by the mother's brother, is hunted down by the Protestant locals and thrown out a window as evidence of the Catholic Irish being in league with the devil. Not exactly respectful retelling of the official history, but an entertaining way of engaging a contemporary audience with local history, and, more importantly, using humour to engage people in the prickly issues of racism and racial integration in London.

Or is it as harmless as that ?

Political correctness is something I wholly support in terms of developing a more respectful and tolerant way of communicating about difference, be it a matter of gender, disability, ethnicity or sexuality. The down side of political correctness is that it can sometimes go a little too far and lead to censorship of discussion around key issues of difference, because everyone's fearful of saying the wrong thing, and some people avoid working their way through their understanding of the difference so that it becomes tolerance or appreciation. Certainly with the extreme mix of cultural diversity that you get in London, I sometimes think there's an alarming lack of information/understanding about different cultural backgrounds, because the general approach is to de-emphasise cultural difference to the extent of not discussing it.

In this production, there initially seems to be a sort of colourblind casting, with an actor of South Asian descent playing a French immigrant one minute, a Russian Jew the next, then a Bengali, then a Somalian. But by the end of the piece, actors seem to pretty much be playing characters that align with their own cultural background, so it's a little confusing until you realise from the frame tale that the play is meant to be presented by a group of asylum seekers being kept in a detention centre. Perhaps this was a move to contextualising the show within a liberal perspective, because they knew that there would be some who would disagree with some of the play's viewpoints.

The final section of the play deals with the presence of Islamic fundamentalists in London, and you do get the feeling it's still a powderkeg of a subject. But all the more important that theatre tries to deal with it, I feel. Many would argue that comedy is the wrong genre in which to do so, which may be true, but it's also the most effective way of opening people's minds to concepts they might otherwise reject. The central premise of the play seems to be that as time passes, the outsider immigrants become integrated as locals, and intermarriage is the key evidence of the barriers being broken down. The cockney barmaid mentioned above is descended from French immigrants and married to a Jewish immigrant - now they're the locals protesting against the most recent immigrants.The difficult pill to swallow is that the playwright then suggests the problem with London society today is that more recent waves of immigrants are not seeking to integrate with local people in the same way, and will not intermarry due to their faith. That's not an easy issue to be voiced, as it quickly sounds like a criticism made from one perspective of others who are of another perspective.

As a result of this, and the use of racial stereotypes within the play, it has come under attack for being racist in some of its treatment of the subject. A friend of one of my colleagues at the Arts Council has made an official complaint and is soon to meet with the director of the production to discuss this, as reported in the media. It's healthy that the production has generated this sort of debate, so I'm hoping there won't be some sort of backlash against Nicholas Hytner for programming the work (as initial complaints have suggested). I can see how some would feel offended by the way characters of their own cultural background are portrayed in the work, but I think much of this is due to the production exploring the historical dynamics of racism. Does it follow that the work in itself is racist?

The complexity of the issues raised, and the swiftness with which discussions of the issues seem to place people into rival camps, is a little worrying. You quickly start to understand why most playwrights are not prepared to deal with these issues head on - they're just too divisive, and are inevitably going to alienate some sections of the audience. The National Theatre has a predominantly white British audience, and the fear is that a production like this, which ideally would engage a more representatively cultural diverse audience, will instead alienate them. Hopefully the controversy will whet people's curiosity and the show will sell strongly and generate more debate as a result. Certainly the young audience members around me during the interval were discussing issues of immigration and integration in a more engaged way than you would otherwise expect.

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Feel free to get in touch with any questions (or if you're planning a London visit and want some theatre recommendations) to jamesstuarthadley@gmail.com

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23/02/09