On the first of its two runs at Southwark Playhouse in 2024 this musical seemed a gauche and heavy-handed take on the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, where immigrant East End communities united against Oswald Mosley’s fascists and the police protecting them. Perhaps Adam Lenson’s production has sharpened: perhaps the message has become even more glaringly resonant. Either way, Cable Street 2.0 is a vastly more polished and enjoyable blend of popular entertainment and vital social history.
It still tends towards the cartoonishly obvious in its plot and characters, centring on a love story between young Jewish boxer Sammy (Isaac Gryn) and Irish baker Mairead (Lizzy-Rose Esin-Kelly), who dreams – groan! - of becoming a poet. To set the scene, they wade through every depression-era cliché, from breadlines to rent hikes to dockyard job-rejections. Oh, no, look: Mairead’s sister has had a baby. Another mouth to feed!
