THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Music and Lyrics by Tim Gilvin, Book by Alex Kanefsky
Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road, London NW1 6XT until February 28, 2026
London’s East End is as steeped in British labor history as a strong cuppa builder’s tea. Lamentably, we Yanks don’t tend to make it further than Notting Hill (or Richmond since Ted Lasso) once we leave Heathrow. I blame the laziness that has become ingrained in us and has become our chief characteristic as a people. It’s all the pristine, Hollywood sanitized Transatlantically projected notion of what we wish Britishness was, based almost solely on an ossified, idealized Hugh Grant forever in his thirties, with Rhys Ifans forever his comic foil, untarnished by Elijah Wood’s valiant attempt to give us a story rooted in football hooliganism with Green Street back in 2005.
But – and I feel the painful and urgent futility of this as I write – I promise you, fellow ‘mericans, East London is cool, and the East End is cool, and far more real than anything you’ll find on Portobello Road or on the borders of Twickenham and far more authentically part of the what the capital is today. And it would be really cool if you stopped reinforcing the same old impressions of the UK year in year out back home.
I implore you.
Try it and see.
Look at the history. Take the East End’s Cable Street for instance (to get this review back on track), a stone’s throw from Brick Lane, which, alas dear reader you may know better because it is in Whitechapel, former prowling ground of the gruesome 19th century serial killer Jack The Ripper – funny, since that exact, well-known and violent narrative is what co-writer Alex Kanefsky uses to set up the frame story for his musical, Cable Street, currently on at The Marylebone Theatre, unironically on the other side of London (NW) from where its main events are set.
This is a musical retelling of one of the most important confrontations in the history of this country, between Britain’s fascists in the 1930s, led by Oswald Mosley and infatuated with Hitler, and the united, diverse communities of the East End fighting under the banner of anti-fascism. Our premise involves Steve, a humble and enthusiastic tour guide offering local, informative, historical walks around Whitechapel and its environs, struggling to compete for clients with the ghoulish glamor of local Jack The Ripper tours.
As Steven leads Oona, an American tourist searching for answers and her family’s heritage, and the rest of his tour group through Brick Lane and the cobbled streets of the neighborhood where so many huddled and tired masses have settled first in this metropolis, history comes alive and dances and sings across the stage in front of us, anchored by Steven’s uncle ‘Sammy’ Smol Scheinberg and the writings he left behind recounting the part he played in what became known as The Battle of Cable Street in 1936.
Isaac Gryn shines with a brutal and charismatic energy as the aforementioned Sammy, a frustrated Jewish pugilist who pounds the pavement looking for work to help look after his family until he is called on to meet a moment of moral crisis and stand up and be counted. Inevitable comparisons will spring to mind whenever a musical employs the cadence of hip hop in its storytelling, and composer Tim Gilvin’s choice confused me at first too. But Sammy is the only character on stage spitting bars, and as a frustrated and oppressed minority desperately for looking for chinks in the armor of the system, this is consistent and makes sense, especially with Gryn’s visceral and rhythmically perfect delivery. Lizzy Rose Esin-Kelly’s performance is also utterly deserving of praise as the inspiring poet, first generation Irish leader of the antifascists, with a voice and an unbound energy that could lead a revolution to artistic victory.
I do worry that this musical is a little more Hamilton and a little less Sondheim and sometimes the storytelling gets a little lost in the mish mash of musical stylings. Because it is a really important story and eerily poignant, particularly for us as Americans. In a time when we have never been more divided, and the forces in power have never sought to divide us so much, it speaks to the need to stand together with all marginalised peoples and to stand against what is wrong and what is evil and what would seek to erase our authenticity as people.
I cannot think of a more important or more inspiring story right now.
