Polar Bears

The slightly dingy 'Iron Belly' provides the stage for this equally dingy play. Set in a student flat in east London, 'Polar Bears' is the story of 3 flat mates, an eastern European girl, a friend turned enemy of one of the aforementioned flat mates, and their drug dealer. The characters may seem familiar. This is because they are overdone stereotypes of the varying kinds of student. There's the posh one, the druggie one, the clubbing one, the bolshie one, the bolshie druggie...you get the idea. It's not shy in it's aim to deal with some fairly gritty subjects either. Racism, sexism, popular culture, youth culture, the class divide. There really are few stones left uncovered. The problem is that you are left wondering what the point is. None of these subjects are dealt with seriously, satirically or with any kind of coherence, and you find yourself bombarded with a string of disparate themes, that are at best tenuously connected to a fairly uninteresting plot. Add to this an average performance and you have yourself a confused and wasted hour.