The student protests at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the late 1960s form the basis for Lessons on Revolution — an inventive evening of documentary theatre created and performed by flatmates and co-authors Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi. After handing out tea and biscuits, the pair disarm us with the caveat they are not professional actors; that the story will dart between past, present, and future; and that audience members will be invited to read lines from the script — including the parts of Rees and Uboldi themselves.
Much of the first half recounts the history of two LSE students whose political awakening ignited a 500-strong protest against the university’s complicity in Rhodesian (now Zimbabwean) apartheid through its ties to British Petroleum and retired Rhodesian politicians, principally LSE director, Walter Adams. Whether Rees and Uboldi are in the LSE library researching the turbulent 1960s or in their flat struggling to write the very play we’re watching, the action moves rapidly through time and place.
Politics soon becomes personal, when the pair discuss their eviction from their flat, or when Uboldi screens a film about his grandfather — a man he admires for supporting abortion rights yet who cannot accept his grandson’s sexuality. It’s a seminal moment that crystallises the show’s central concern: we are all bundles of contradiction, and history rarely moves cleanly forward.
The set is just a simple table and chairs, two screens projecting the script at the sides, with bare lightbulbs strung up above it all. The soundtrack of funky techno music and the rapid change of mood help prevent the evening from sinking into a dry history lesson with accompanying slideshow, though the show sometimes gets bogged down in it own earnestness. And the message seems to be about how the ennui that can affix to unfulfilled revolutionary reconstruction can also become fuel for our own self-reflection and possible optimism.
The two theatre-makers never explain why they chose this event as a springboard for their reflections — perhaps a moot point, but still a curiosity. That blending of the personal and the political gives the evening both its freshness and its limits. One of the show’s closing lines is: “We’re doomed until we’re not,” lands like a quiet challenge: history isn’t finished; it’s waiting for us to take another turn.
Writers and Performers: Samuel Rees, Gabriele Uboldi
Set and Video Designer: Ella Dale
Sound Designer: Rudy Percival
To: 25 October
Running time: 1 hour, no interval
Photo Credit: Jack Sain