Scuttlers (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

When you walk into the auditorium at the Royal Exchange Theatre for a performance of Scuttlers, you enter a different world. The in-the-round nature of the theatre makes everything it stages immersive for the audience to a certain degree, but as you get your ticket checked for Scuttlers, you'll need to step over or past various young lads lolling about in the aisles, maybe incapacitated through gin or simply too tired from work at the factories.

This is what live theatre is all about, of course - taking the audience to a different place or time, immersing them in the world of the characters. The fact the actors stay in character before the play begins, and during the intermission, gives much more power to the piece itself.

Scuttlers were gangs of youths who would fight on the streets of Manchester and Salford in the late 19th century, akin to the now much better known Peaky Blinders of Birmingham or the razor gangs of Glasgow. They would fight with knives and the buckles of their heavy leather belts, very rarely aiming to kill, but rather scar and maim. It was gang warfare fed by poverty among the working classes, particularly in the Ancoats area of the city.

It was a dangerous time, and director Wils Wilson manages to get that feeling of fear and aggression across expertly by having the aforementioned Scuttlers lounging about in the doorways as you enter, a placid but passively threatening presence as you find your seat. Peter Rice's use of sound both inside the auditorium and outside, in the foyer, adds to the underlying menace: a dirge of dull rumbling spews out of speakers, whispering of danger and violence to your subconscious.

Another strong element of this portrayal of atmosphere is Denis Jones's fantastic musical score, an aggressive industrial soundtrack which builds between scenes and translates both the working class environment the Scuttlers inhabit, and the barely suppressed violence of their times. The music is one of the most successful aspects of the entire production, at times discordant and uncompromising, rather like the Scuttlers themselves.

This wonderful brooding atmosphere is just as well as there isn't an awful lot of story to Scuttlers. It's more about the people and their times, showing the audience what these youngsters were like and what they did rather than focusing on an engrossing narrative. There is a subplot about a soldier and the son he's destined never to know, and many of the characters - particularly the girls - have rich back stories which place them on a human plain, but by and large this play is a document of what life was like in working class Manchester in the 1870s, 80s and 90s, as if we'd been transported there by TARDIS for two hours to watch from a (just about) safe distance.

Bryan Parry oozes testosterone as Sean, the head of the Bengal Tigers gang, and is uncompromisingly intimidating, both in his stature and performance. He struggles to suppress the thirst for power of his right-hand man, the equally as unsettling Jimmy (Dan Parr), and we see that Sean has his head screwed on even if that head is thinking about violent things. Sean is a much better leader than Jimmy would ever be, because Sean has restraint and forethought. If the Tigers were to be led by Jimmy, what we see happen to one of the female characters would become sadly commonplace.

Real life Mancunian Scuttlers from
Greengate, Salford, in 1894

Leading the rival gang from Prussia Street is Kieran Urquhart as George, another example of how the toughest of men can still have a soft heart. George cradles his baby nephew gently, and plaits his sister's hair. His self-confidence is much lower than that of Sean or Jimmy, and he wonders how to lead his boys into battle, seeking advice from soldier Joe (Tachia Newall), who himself used to be a member of the Tigers before joining up. This demonstration of self-doubt within the otherwise violent world of the Scuttlers is well played, and I'm grateful writer Rona Munro has managed to squeeze that into the characterisations. Much of Munro's previous work shares Scuttlers' themes, whether it be the feminism and decline into savagery at the heart of the story she wrote for Doctor Who in 1989, or the environmental similarities of her other work for the Royal Exchange on Mary Barton in 2006.

The female cast is particularly strong. Rona Morison's Theresa is a convincing flame-haired mother figure for the Bengal Tigers' girls and cubs, while Chloe Harris's Polly has a story that creeps up on the audience toward the end of the play without much notice, and is all the more powerful for that. Her final lines as the play rushes to an end, and she is left bedraggled and bloodied by events, sum up the entire play so well.

My favourite character, which I suspect is a combination of good writing and a fabulously charismatic performance from Caitriona Ennis, is Irish girl Margaret. She has recently joined the Tigers and is taken under Theresa's non-judgemental wing. Margaret shows ambition despite an almost crushing lack of confidence, and her story is the most compelling of the play, giving hope among so much distress.

Special mention must got to David Judge as the fish-out-of-water Thomas (not Tommy!), a sensitive young man desperate to find a place for himself in life. He has the moves (like a Victorian Michael Jackson) but is repeatedly told he lacks the conviction and strength needed to be a full-blown Scuttler - that is, until Thomas proves otherwise. It's a lovely turn from Judge, who gives the character a lot of charisma and sensitivity which makes him the closest the audience gets to someone they can relate to or root for.

Scuttlers is a play of violence, aggression and anger, depicting a time when poverty and unemployment in Manchester's suburbs led to some terrible crimes on the streets which only really subsided thanks to some forward-thinking investment in community regeneration at the turn of the century. The police and magistrates could not quell the Scuttlers despite ever harsher punishments, and it was only the establishment of places like the legendary Salford Lads' and Girls' Club that burst the gangs' bubble.

There's swearing, there's violence, but there's also a heart, particularly among the female characters. It would be crass to sum this up as West Side Story in Ancoats, but essentially that is the general thrust - bored and disadvantaged youths kicking out against one another for want of something better and more constructive to do. As the final scene reminds us, tribes in our culture still exist today - whether they be football fans, emos, goths or skinheads - and we must be wary of letting down the working class youths of today, as the Scuttlers were almost 150 years ago.

The stats
Writer: Rona Munro
Director: Wils Wilson
Cast: Rona Morison (Theresa); Chloe Harris (Polly); Caitriona Ennis (Margaret); Tachia Newall (Joe); Anna Krippa (Susan); Dan Parr (Jimmy); David Judge (Thomas); Bryan Parry (Sean); Kieran Urquhart (George); Duncan Ross (Policeman); Pawel Adamkiewicz, Ramial Aqeel, Abigayle Bartley, Casey Birks, Tabitha Bowman, Hayden Burns, Joe Callaghan, Michael Coleman, Duncan Crompton, Tyler Dobbs, John Dudley, Tom Durrant, Conor Glean, Jonah Gourlay, Lois Griffiths-Balaam, Josh Hawson, Steven Ireland, Cassandra John-Baptiste, Tim Law, Calum Lill, Tom Lyons, Joseph Mihranian, Ceri Moss, Olivia Peers, Leyla Percival, Sonny Poontip, Adriano Primerano, Dave Ramsden, Duncan Ross, Lyndsay Rowan, Ciara Warburton (community ensemble)
Performed at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, February 5 to March 7, 2015. Performance reviewed: February 7, 2015.

Links:
Scuttlers on Royal Exchange website (retrieved Feb 9 2015)
Scuttlers on Wikipedia (retrieved Feb 9 2015)
BBC interview with Andrew Davies, author of The Gangs of Manchester: The Story of the Scuttlers (retrieved Feb 9 2015)
Review of The Gangs of Manchester: The Story of the Scuttlers on Reviews in History website (retrieved Feb 9 2015)
Inside Out feature on the Scuttlers of Manchester Part 1 and Part 2 (retrieved Feb 9 2015)