The new Star Trek is pretty easy on the eye: attractive cast members, state of the art special effects and a reassuringly shiny and new Starship Enterprise. Sitting through it is like a warm bath for the brain: you don’t have to do anything but lie back (multiplex cinema seats are practically beds anyway) and that nice Mr Abrams, the director, will show you exactly what to look at and just how to feel. It couldn’t be more different from The Frontline by Che Walker at the Globe Theatre: what you see when you see this production – and you really should – will depend upon the whereabouts of your seat and how much effort you make to engage with the almost overwhelming amount of storytelling on offer.
The Frontline is set on a London street corner near a tube station and a lap dancing club. The corner is home to bouncers and bible bashers; dancers and drug dealers; gangs and girlfriends; freaks, foodcarts & philosophers, homeless junkies, struggling actors and asylum seekers – among others. Their many stories overlap and interweave in a high energy blast of light, sound and song. There’s violence aplenty and liberal use of Anglo-Saxon monosyllables but, as Che Walker points out in his programme notes, the same could be said of the Shakespeare plays usually seen on the very same stage.
The Globe is the perfect outdoor setting for this very urban story: audience and performers share the same space just as London’s millions of inhabitants have through the ages. Full use is made of the thrust configuration and, thanks to the lingering evening sunlight in the first half, the groundlings mingle with the characters to become part of the chaotic, vibrant life of the corner. The pace slows after the interval and, as darkness gathers, a mood of gentle melancholy creeps beneath the humour to accompany the tragic conclusions of some storylines.
There aren’t any time travelling Vulcans and those benches are murder – even with a cushion – but, if you’re not in the mood to be manipulated, get down to The Frontline: what you get out of it will be up to you.
