Come Out Eli

Submitted by on 6 October, 2003 - 12:00

'Come Out Eli', at the Arcola Theatre, Hackney, September 2003
Reviewed by Janine Booth

Last Christmas, police held gunman Eli Hall and his hostage under seige in a Hackney flat for 17 days. Graham Road was condoned off, lots of people's daily lives were affected, and most locals had something to say about it.

Playwright Alecky Blythe tape-recorded many of their comments, and this play consists of five actors reciting their words.

A seige is usually portrayed on stage and screen as a melodramatic stand-off. It is all tension, violence, good-versus-evil, law-versus-disorder. You could forget that it happens somewhere. In a block of flats, in a road, where people live, shop, worry and fear.

'Come Out Eli' does not forget that. In fact, it tells you very little about the seige, the weaponry, the gunman or the police tactics. Instead, it tells you about what it was like for those of us who live nearby.

And it does that pretty well. You walk into the theatre's auditorium past a barricaded road, with video installations and press clippings. The characters are authentic, the views are those I remember hearing, or even thinking.

A police officer, drafted in from outside the borough, remarks to a man that he must be used to this sort of thing because after all he lives in Hackney. No, protests the man, we are not. He has a righteous anger that many people around here feel. Hackney is where we live: it might have its share of troubles, but civilisation has not broken down and we do not just wallow in urban decay. Well said that man.

But I also felt that 'Come Out Eli' played too many of its characters for laughs. It should be possible to show Hackney working-class people in all their variety, with plenty of humour, without setting them up for ridicule. This play did not quite manage that. (There is also a running joke about one key character wanting sex in return for an interview with the playwright which is seriously overdone.)

Having said that, one particular character merited ridicule. The Council's Speaker was about as far removed from community leadership as you can imagine. She even revealed that a whip-round of councillors for those adversely affected by the seige had raised £100. There are 57 councillors in Hackney - a hundred poxy quid!

As the days dragged by, some people began to lose patience and suggest that the police go in and finish Eli off. But others held on to their humanity and wished him to come out, to save it all coming to a bloody end.

But Eli did not come out. His hostage having escaped, he set fire to the flat and killed himself. Then Hackney got back to normal.

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