Cockney stereotype party ‘like a hate crime’

A COCKNEY-THEMED Christmas party organised by a Hackney-based production company has been compared to a “hate crime”.

The “immersive theatre” experience, at £55 per head, has been criticised on social media for its portrayal of working-class Londoners. Zebedee Productions, the company behind the event in east London, has described it as a “Cockney nativity” play.

The event comes with a meal including smoked salmon, herb buttered roasted supreme of chicken and mince pies. Promotional images for the event, running from Dec 1-22 include a woman smoking and drinking while pregnant, a man selling what appears to be knock-off jewellery and a young man in an England football shirt.

Social media users have hit out at the production, criticising it as a clumsy caricature of behaviour and habits of working-class people.

Pam Beddard tweeted: “And we wonder why what was once the white working-class (before the pits/factories shut) is so angry? Anyone else, this’d be a hate crime.”

Tim Strangleman, a professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told The Independent: “I don’t think you’d get any other group treated in such a derogatory and stereotypical way for entertainment. Could you imagine a play set in Southall about a south east Asian Christmas party? Probably not.

“Ironically, it is in a Hackney pub, which was once likely frequented by lots of working-class people, and those attending this play would likely have never set foot in there in the past.”

Zoe Wellman, Zebedee’s artistic director, defended the event as a “proper celebration of east London culture through theatre”.