Friday 7th May
These Colours
KING OF THE GYPSIES
Doors open at 7.30pm for the cafe. The show will start at 8pm
I
When our host says that he knows we're only there for his stories, he's not wrong.
They're crucial to the show that follows. As he hands out mugs of tea (there's no
sugar in sight, so I didn't ask for one), the eponymous Gypsy doesn't disappoint.
He picks a new character for each period of history covered, from 1500s India to
modern Britain, via Italy and Ottoman Greece. All of those characters feed their
lives into the grand narrative of a people always on the run, personified in the
King. It's a lifestyle that has its critics - many of them - but McCleary also manages
to convey a certain romantic freedom inherent in a life lived on the road, one not
tied to systems and institutions, one without taxes and exams. The charm and the
danger are both present, as is the weariness of the man (or race) that hasn't stopped
moving in five hundred years. Anti-Gypsy sentiment is given a voice too, in recorded
soundbites played through the show: voices of Gypsies and ordinary members of the
public, some of whom are violently anti-Gypsy.Of the stories told, those in Italy
and Germany are the most powerful. The staggering number of Gypsy deaths inside Nazi
concentration camps is introduced lightly and then left to hang in the air: half
a million. Then there's the old Romany man who finds his two drowned daughters lying,
ignored, on a beach. The sense of tragedy is understated and never allowed to dominate
the performance.<Another story, dated back to Biblical times, gives a possible reason
for the persecution of Gypsies - namely that a Gypsy blacksmith allegedly provided
the nails for Jesus' crucifixion, but only three of them, as the fourth was hidden.
Some believe Gypsies will be persecuted until that nail is found, and they've been
looking for it ever since. It's little snippets like that - in which playwright Pauline
Lynch shines an unexpected light on Gypsy history - that make this play such an interesting,
informative one. That it is entertaining and endearing as well is what makes it so
recommended.
