Cable Street is a musical that premièred last year at the Southwark Playhouse and has now migrated to the Marylebone Theatre. Fans of beautiful staging will be instantly smitten by the amazing achievement of the designer, Yoav Segal.

The script by Tim Gilvin and Adam Kanefsky tells the story of a violent stand-off in October 1936 between cockney activists and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

The authors treat the East End during the depression as a panto or a moral fairy tale. It’s good vs evil. The socialists are hard-working, golden-hearted heroes who rise up against the wicked landlords and their cruel rent hikes. The fascists are angry, misshapen losers led by a waddling baldie in a stick-on moustache. The socioeconomic background is hard to decipher. Rents in London are soaring and the population is growing and yet wages are falling and job opportunities are drying up. It’s difficult to see why newcomers would choose to enter this economic quagmire and cause rental values to climb.

The show opens in the present day with a group of tourists being led around Cable Street by an elderly historian. After a quick change of costume, the 13 performers reappear as cockneys in the 1930s. Each actor plays........

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