James Haddrell celebrates Blood On Your Hands at Southwark Playhouse
Over the years there have been plays, books and TV shows about real events that capture the public imagination, and which can ultimately lead to real change.
The latest example of that has to be the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, about the scandal that saw almost a thousand subpostmasters losing the savings, their livelihoods, their homes, finding themselves being prosecuted and in some cases imprisoned, all because of a faulty billion-pound software system and the refusal of senior executives to accept the existence of those faults.
The campaign to investigate the system and to overturn the rulings began over two decades ago, but it is only with the release of the Toby Jones-led drama on mainstream television that government is finally getting involved. The case may have already reached court, with the subpostmasters winning, but the nature of the British justice system has left most without true recompense. Now, finally, under incredible pressure from the public, the prime minister has confirmed that a new law will be introduced to ensure that those wrongly convicted will be “swiftly exonerated and compensated” – but that has only come about because of the huge popularity of ITV’s biggest drama in three years.
If Mr Bates vs The Post Office seeks justice for a group of individuals in this country, there are other pieces demanding bigger change, and nowhere more strongly than in the case of the meat industry. A string of documentaries are forcing viewers to engage with the processes that bring their food to their plates (notably the BBC documentary Meat: A Threat to our Planet, and Netflix’s new release You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment), but while these and pieces like them tackle the global impact of the industry and the health implications for consumers, they rarely shine a light on the individuals who work in the industry and the impact that literally being a part of the food-chain can have.
Fortunately, ambitious theatre company Patch Plays are doing just that with the revival of their acclaimed play, Blood On Your Hands. Running at Southwark Playhouse until 3 February, this is the story of the forgotten victims of the meat industry. Examining the human impact on those who work in slaughterhouses, it centres around ex-veterinarian and Ukrainian refugee Kostyantyn who, arriving in a sleepy Welsh town, finds work in an abattoir. Here he befriends Dan, a happy-go-lucky Welsh lad who cracks too many jokes for his own good. All the while, Kostyantyn’s wife and daughters are home in Ukraine, and Dan’s activist ex-girlfriend won’t stop pestering him at work. Can these two men endure the harsh realities of their everyday lives and their bleak, bloody working environment?
Grace Joy Howarth’s play comes to Southwark Playhouse after a short run at The Cockpit Theatre in June 2022, where it was awarded five stars and hailed as “sinister, moving and electric” by London Theatre Reviews.
If Mr Bates vs The Post Office has proved anything, it is that audiences are crying out for entertainment that also informs, and that informative drama can mobilise the masses and bring about change. With that in mind, with any luck ITV commissioners have Patch Plays on their radar.