A campaign of frenetic yet flawed fun to tell the story of the Leasehold scandal
Michele Sheldon’s fringe production Fleecehold, as part of the Camden Fringe Festival, brings together an ensemble cast to tell of the scandal in Leasehold housing that is attaching “onerous terms” to contracts and deeds. If it sounds heavy, Sheldon’s bouncy, episodic writing, the pacey direction, and the humour and caricature that the cast bring to it transforms it into an enjoyable and enlightening evening.
In telling the stories of Katie Kendrick, Cath Williams and Jo Darbyshire, the three women from North West England who take on the vested interests of property developers and those who facilitate them, Sheldon’s production aims to make clear and understandable that which most of us would hire and trust solicitors to deal with, making continuous breaks in the fourth wall for the cast (led by Lucille Ferguson, Cath Burton and Sasha Ravencroft respectively) to make sure we’re coming along for the ride.
Shuttling between scenes featuring real and imagined figures, fiction and reality, the play lands somewhere between protest, TED talk and sketch show and it is this frenetic energy in performance that is most compelling. Albeit very (very) rough around the edges, there is a certain charm lent to it because of this, and the cast manages to hold together despite the need for a line prompt or two.
Unfortunately, the lack of confidence in the lines from some of the cast meant that the meaning of some sections were lost almost to the point of unintelligibility, but this is also partly down to the nature of the subject matter and the amount of legal and political jargon present. As such, it would be lovely to see a little more time being spent on the unpacking of some of the more complex elements of the play, something the snappy 90-minute run time would allow.
At points morphing into pantomime (with even some boos and hisses from audience members), villains were played with relish by Philip Honeywell, Rowland D Hill and Tim Knightley and it was in some of those more fun-filled elements that the play felt most confident. That being said, while the interruptions from the Big Bad – in this instance, the landed aristocracy – were at first entertaining, the effect did begin to wane as the production went on.
All this to say, despite being far from faultless, Fleecehold is a rollicking juggernaut of a show which probably would need a bit more rehearsal time to smoothen out the bumps but was nevertheless enjoyable, informative and funny.
Fleecehold is playing at the Little Angel Theatre as part of the Camden Fringe until 13th August.
To find out more information about the National Leasehold Campaign visit: https://nationalleaseholdcampaign.org/