The UK Drill Project, at The Pit, reviewed

The UK Drill Project is a cabaret show that celebrates greed, criminality and drug-taking among black males in London. It opens with a septet of masked performers, sheathed in dark Lycra, singing a rhythmic poem while pretending to fire guns and stab people with knives. These sad young rappers are desperate to look scary because they’re scared themselves. And though they claim to be artists, their purpose in writing ‘drill’ songs and posting videos online is to protect their drug profits and to intimidate rival gangs.

Musically, they lack accomplishment. They can’t play instruments and appear to own none. Harmony and melody are alien to them. One of the rappers successfully coaxes a beat from an orange drum that looks like an oversize basketball but this is a rather modest achievement. A small child can tap out a rhythm. As can a woodpecker. Creatively they focus on writing lyrics about their feuds with other gangs, and their impenetrable street jargon needs to be translated. This lands them in trouble. A character called TJ is arrested on suspicion of murder, and a Scotland Yard etymologist interprets his lyrics in a prejudicial manner. TJ raps about attacking an ‘opps’ (opponent) with a ‘wap’ (weapon), which he uses to stab his victim in the ‘dome’ (head). What do these words prove? Only that TJ has pugilistic ambitions. The lyrics don’t connect him to a specific offence, and yet TJ is found guilty in court with no supporting forensic evidence whatsoever.

According to the script, several convictions have been secured on this questionable basis. Which is alarming. Such a flimsy verdict should be overturned on appeal. Other aspects of his case ring false. He doesn’t have a solicitor. And he’s visited alone in his prison cell by two bullying detectives who make no record of the interrogation. It sounds absurd. The show’s tiresome, slapdash composition makes it hard to sympathise with the plight of these drill drop-outs. Multiple storylines are picked up and discarded at random. Incessant music obscures the dialogue. Off-stage voices make allegations about prejudice while actors perform scenes that bear no relation to the allegations.

The style veers from drama, to comedy, to legal polemic, to political caricature, to solo rap performance. What is this? A hopelessly amateurish, self-indulgent muddle. An educational segment features a prisoner delivering a detailed lecture about how to refine crack on a kitchen cooker. What marvellous news for the next generation of violent pushers. They can learn their skills at the tax-funded Barbican.

Next, a character named V gets ready to reveal three reforms that will cut knife crime. But his speech is curtailed for some reason and he storms off, screaming like a baby. What a shame. The audience was about to hear something useful. And V’s inability to cope with this minor setback tells us a lot about his temperament: self-pitying, feeble-minded, narcissistic and spineless. It’s evident that the Barbican’s moral priorities are up the spout. On reducing knife crime, they say nothing. On making crack at home, they’re helpful and informative. The fact is that most Londoners avoid weapons and pushing drugs but their lives are too dull to catch the interest of the Barbican. But gangs of school-leavers who slice each other up on the streets are cool and sexy. Someone ought to be jailed for creating this dreary horror show. Not the rappers. The producers.

The subsidised Hampstead Theatre has a new history play about Mary Stuart’s relationship with an aristocratic supporter, James Melville. Mary herself scarcely features in the show which concentrates on Melville’s verbose tussles with two minor courtiers. The whole thing is monumentally static. Chat, chat, chat. That’s all that happens. Periodically, the characters beetle off-stage and walk back on like plaster figures chiming the hours on a clock tower.

You need to be briefed in advance about 16th-century Scottish history to make sense of this convoluted drama. And it’s out of place in Hampstead. Audiences in Edinburgh, where the script is set, would have the necessary expertise to appreciate the story.

In the closing moments, 15 rioting women appear and yell angrily at Melville. A minute later they vanish. Those poor actresses have no lines to speak, only slogans to scream. And the rules of the acting trade oblige them to spend two hours in their dressing-room at every show in return for 60 seconds on stage. The angry mob could easily have been suggested with a sound effect or a line of dialogue. And the wage bill for 15 performers comes to at least £4,500 per week – enough to fund a new fringe production from scratch. What insane profligacy. The Arts Council is burning bank notes for fun.