Simon Ward reviews Lessons On Revolution at the Hope Theatre

In this thrilling and thought-provoking piece of documentary theatre, writer-performers Samuel Rees (Sam) and Gabriele Uboldi (Gab) skilfully, wittily and movingly weave together a narrative which encompasses, among many other things, Cecil Rhodes and his conquest and exploitation of part of Africa, the student protests at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the late 1960s and the scandalous housing crisis in Camden in 2023. Together with remarkable work by sound designer Rudy Percival and set and projection designer Ella Dale, they create a truly memorable and compelling show.

As we enter the room it is laid out as a hybrid student flat-cum-seminar room. There are cushions and mattresses on the floor as overflow seating. We are offered cups of tea and ginger nuts. There is a turntable playing The Velvet Underground. So far, so student flat, perhaps in the sixties or seventies. But in the middle of the room is a table on which stands an old-fashioned overhead projector, surrounded by documents, papers and slides, thus decidedly placing us in a seminar room or lecture theatre, and definitely several decades ago. As the show opens we are explicitly invited to keep both those ideas in mind, as well as to remember that we are actually in the small room above the Hope and Anchor pub in Islington. It is a blend of fact, fiction and imagination which the show maintains throughout, to rather exhilarating effect.

The performers are also engagingly frank in admitting to their struggles in putting the piece together. The challenges of working out how to manage the unwieldy and often contradictory material into some kind of coherent thread are laid bare. We feel their pain as they scour the LSE archives to find the information they need to flesh out what led the students of 1966 and 1968 to make their protests. And we share their desire to ponder whether there is anything to learn from those protests about how to challenge today’s injustices.

The delivery feels like a university lecture at times – facts come thick and fast but, as in the best lectures, they are fascinating, piquing our curiosity to find out more about everything we are hearing. At times one is tempted to jump in and ask questions or challenge, as though it were a real seminar, but it isn’t quite. For woven between the discussion of the protagonists in the debates and controversies of the late sixties are the stories of our own two performers – how they both dreamed of London from afar, the thrill they get from the fact that the BT Tower is visible from their flat, if you look in the right direction, their hopes and disappointments and desires for better things.

Touchingly, there is a warning attached to the show that there will be audience participation. And indeed there is, but it is all handled very sensitively, and, perhaps as a result, the audience members rise to the occasion magnificently. As the show draws to a dramatic close there is a kind of pause after the preceding frenetic pace and two members of the audience are invited to read. It turns out to be the heartfelt thoughts of Sam and Gab about the play, the process and whether they have got anywhere. It is all the more moving for being delivered, as it were, at arm’s length.

At several points, Gab remarks that the piece is really all about failure – the students didn’t have their demands met, global oil corporations are still wreaking havoc, the London rental housing market is still appalling. But if there is failure, I think we conclude that Samuel Beckett was surely right: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better’.

Lessons On Revolution runs at the Hope Theatre, 207 Upper Street, London, N1 1RL, until 7th October.

There will also be a ‘Rapid Write Responses’ session after the show on 5th October at which emerging theatre makers will be invited to create a rapid response to the show, to be shared as part of the performance.