“We Are The Lions, Mr Manager”

The following review was written by Tony Church

A review of We Are The Lions, Mr Manager (Neil Gore, Townsend Productions)

We Are The Lions, Mr Manager is a typical piece of political theatre from Townsend Productions and from the pen of Neil Gore.

In usual style, it uses words and music to bring to life the struggle of the Grunwick strikers during the latter years of the 1970’s.

The title comes from the famous response that Jayaben Desai, the diminutive strike leader, gave to a bully of a manager at Grunwicks who called her a “chattering monkey.”

“What you are running here is not a factory, it is a zoo. In a zoo, there are many types of animals. Some are monkeys who dance on your fingertips; others are lions who can bite your head off. We are the lions, Mr Manager.”

Mrs Desai (as she was always referred to as) was an educated woman and her intelligence, bravery and integrity come through in a highly skilled performance by Madhavi Patel.

Of course, many who come to see a Townsend production are not typical theatregoers; they are political and trade union activists. But the strength in Neil Gore’s writing (and Louise Townsend’s direction) is that they can satisfy them as well as those more at home in a mainstream setting.

Gore is also always a pleasure to watch and listen to as the second actor in productions with his multi-instrument musical talent, characterisations and different accents.

Additionally, he encourages audience participation. In this production getting Mrs Desai to persuade members of the audience to stand on the picket line is a masterstroke; made all the more amusing as in the guise of a police officer he then tries to break them up with the statement that he is “having none of that immersive theatre here.”

Yes, there are elements of pantomime, but political pantomime is proved to be very effective.

This has been a long tour beginning last autumn and going on until May. But Grunwicks was a seminal dispute that established that no group of workers (especially more vulnerable workers as the southern Asian community were at the time) should have to put up with super-exploitative employers and it is important that as many people as possible are exposed to that message through this work.

Ultimately the Grunwick strikers were defeated by the spineless attitude of the trade union leadership and a Labour government (for those who remember Neil Kinnock’s infamous speech ‘yes, a Labour government’), but in Gore’s final speech for the main character he shows that her spirit is not broken and she still believes in the dignity of those who like her made modern working class inspirational history.

It is brilliantly delivered by Madhavi Patel and like her it left tears in my eyes.