Review: Lessons on Revolution

Three thousand students occupied the London School of Economics in 1968, in a bold bid to change the course of history. But today, as writer and performers Sam Rees and Gabriele Uboldi remind us, their brave actions languish in LSE’s library. Articulate and lovingly researched, this documentary theatre links that headline-spinning protest to countless other student-led actions against the influence of colonialism, the military, and the oil and gas industries in their place of learning – the place where students are told they will transform for the better. Nonetheless, Uboldi says: “They failed.”

Lessons on Revolution proposes that their failures, in 1968, remain our failures. Written in Rees and Uboldi’s moldy, barely legal London rental, the play explores the fleeting nature of hope, and how hard it can be to even imagine a better future, let alone to achieve one. We gather around a retro overhead projector, like conspirators, but the folders of evidence still feel historical, rather than immediate. “This is not a Netflix show”, they tell us, but through their worthy efforts not to bend the archives to tell a glossy story, the hour sacrifices a narrative arc. It feels righteously communal, though, that it’s left on us to continue the work.