Down and Out in Paris and London
Pleasance Courtyard
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
5 stars

This is one of the very, very few plays at this year’s festival dealing with the everyday realities of poverty and exploitation — but it’s very, very good.

It’s based on George Orwell’s book about living on the breadline in Paris in the 1930s, and Polly Toynbee’s 2003 book Hard Work in which she made a similar journey, adopting the lifestyle of the working poor in London for a few weeks.

The play is structured by taking comparable scenes from both books and dramatising them back to back and by building a narrative of growing awareness by both writers that the problems of unemployment, poverty and stalled social mobility cry out for political action.

In one particularly powerful sequence, for example, Orwell’s depressing experience trying to pawn his clothes to a hostile moneylender segues into Toynbee’s attempt to furnish her flat by using Brighthouse, the company which targets the poor by selling everyday items on instalment plans over long periods at around 70 per cent interest meaning goods end up costing far more than they should do.

Through these dramatic comparisons, we see how little life has changed for many of our fellow citizens. It is the same outrageously harsh, exhausting, desperate struggle, day after day, for food, clothing and shelter, as it was in the 1930s.

The technique also encourages us to reflect on the limitations and contradictions of liberals like Orwell and Toynbee, who although showing some sympathy for the poor, consistently fail to promote effective, socialist policies to help them.

As we saw from Toynbee’s recent anti-Corbyn piece in the Guardian, personal decency can easily be entwined with political deceit and literary epiphanies for middle-class writers do not replace the need for revolutionary social change to stop the creation of poverty by the rich.

The writing, by David Byrne, is outstandingly vivid and pointed. Despite its serious intent and sharp political messages, the production is fast-paced and funny, with some great ensemble acting by the actors as they skilfully switch characters.

At the end of the play Orwell says: “It’s impossible to live in a society such as ours and not want to change it” — and that’s exactly how this subtle, effective piece of political theatre makes us feel. Highly relevant, highly reflective, and highly recommended.

On at the Pleasance Courtyard until August 31. The play transfers to London in 2016, with big reductions in ticket prices for those on the minimum wage, on zero-hours contracts, or on jobseeker’s allowance.