Riff Raff
**
1936
***
Riff Raff doesn’t refer to Ken Loach’s superb 1991 film but is the playwriting debut of American actor Laurence Fishburne. Sadly, it’s a
90-minute slice of effortful macho posturing from the overused genre of urban aggro.
So, we’re in a squalid New York crack den in the aftermath of a drugs heist. When this dubious trio aren’t shouting they’re off on tedious tangents of reminiscence, as Fishburne desperately tries to make us care for them. For all that director Bill Buckhurst and his actors go at this with fearsome intensity, we simply don’t.
There’s political posturing aplenty upstairs, as 1936 embarks on a whistle-stop tour of the fraught build-up to the Berlin Olympics. There’s an occasional sense of hyper-animated history lesson about Tom McNab’s 80-minute succession of short scenes that fly across continents, from Hitler, Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl, to fretful American discussions of a boycott.
There’s no missing McNab’s niftiest point, though: amid all the worry over Germany’s treatment of its Jewish athletes, the great Jesse Owens (Rolan Bell) is unmistakably a second-class citizen in the racially divided American team.
Both until April 24. Information: 020 7503 1646, www.arcolatheatre.com
Riff Raff
Arcola Theatre
Arcola Street, E8 2DJ
