Vivid picture of battle with uncaring system

Cathy Disturbing debut

INSPIRED by Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach’s hardhitting 1960s TV docu-drama about poverty and homelessness, Ali Taylor’s modern reworking for Cardboard Citizens’ Theatre makes its Fringe debut.

And a powerful, disturbing, eye-opening slice of social realism it is too.

An impassioned tale, vividly brought to life, it stars an excellent Cathy Owen as the title character, a hardworking cleaner struggling to make ends meet.

Three months behind with the rent in London, Cathy finds herself thrust into a spiralling, Kafkaesque circle of debt, homelessness and bureaucracy as she is forced to drag her teenage daughter (Hayley Wareham) across the country in search of decent social housing.

Very much in tune with Loach’s recent movie, I, Daniel Blake, the play shows how the dearth of social housing can see families uprooted from their communities and placed in temporary accommodation hundreds of miles from everything and everyone they know. In Cathy’s case here, Newcastle then West Bromwich.

In between, Cathy desperately explores every avenue she can think of – all played out against an unsympathetic system more concerned with forms than welfare.

If ever there was a sobering corollary to Benefits Street, this is it. A soundscape and video footage of real life testimonies lend the piece even more weight.

At the end the audience are invited to attend a post show Q&A to debate the issues raised. Asked for one word descriptions of what they’ve just witnessed, ‘horror’, ‘shameful’ and ‘reality’ are just some of the answers thrown back.

A vital piece of theatre that should be seen by every politician in the country.

Pleasance Dome until Aug 26