Back in 1936, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists marched on London’s East End, where the racist thugs met their match.
The Battle of Cable Street saw the Hitler sympathiser and his black shirts clash with a blockade led by a united group of half a million Jews, Irish Catholics and Communists.
The powerful historic moment is the subject of a new musical, which feels more timely than ever considering the huge rise in antisemitic incidents over the past few months.
Cable Street flips between a walking tour of the East End in 2024 and October 1936, with a large cast (perhaps too big for the space) playing multiple characters with different accents.
The focus is on three young people in the period setting: a Jew, an Irish immigrant and a white working-class Brit flirting with fascism.
Sadly there’s not much depth for the first two beyond representing their people group, making it hard to care much about the characters as individuals despite the scope of the story. Rather than singing, the Jewish lad ambles through Hamilton-style rapping which doesn’t quite work with the rest of the piece, while the Irish girl spends time singing about baking bread in a number that feels somewhat pointless to the plot.
Nevertheless, the latter played by Sha Dessi is a standout singing performance alongside the sensational vocals of Danny Colligan’s lad who joins the British Union of Fascists, in what are some of Cable Street’s better songs. His character is by far the most interesting and developed, as we witnessed the tragedy of him finding something to be a part of among Mosley’s thugs and their racist scapegoating.
Meanwhile, Jez Unwin impresses by swinging between his Cor Blimey fascist leader and the lead’s concerned Jewish father; offering a heartfelt song as the latter in the second half.
Other cast members amused us with their stereotypes of British newspapers’ reactions to what’s going down in Cable Street.
Yet the small theatre space is a struggle for the bigger set pieces around the actual clashes.
The battle itself is pretty much over at the start of Act 2 before returning to the Titanic/West Side Story romance that sadly had failed to impact us emotionally from the off.
Nevertheless, there are some uplifting moments in this musical. But ultimately it felt not much more than a good first draft which needed more time in the creative process.
Cable Street is performed at Southwark Playhouse, Borough until March 16, 2024.
