Justice in Motion: Lines and duty

Justice in Motion’s Code was developed at 101 Outdoor Arts in Greenham premiered at Greenham and Turnpike. Now it is touring so N2 caught up with it at Broad Street, Oxford on Saturday, August 19. Review by JON LEWIS

CREATED at 101 Outside Arts in Newbury and on a short tour this summer prior to touring nationally in 2024, Anja Meinhardt’s thrilling Justice in Motion production of Code attracted a large audience for the free noontime performance in Oxford’s historic Broad Street.

Justice In Motion dramatises contemporary issues such as modern slavery, sex trafficking, exploitation of workers, and, earlier this summer, Ukrainian war refugees.

Code explores county lines drug gangs and their induction of young, vulnerable children into being couriers of drugs and money. The drama also portrays knife crime when drug deals go wrong. These are hard-hitting subjects for a popular, public drama and Meinhardt astutely employs visually-arresting scenes to capture the attention of the crowd.

Meinhardt’s productions are known for fusing dance and movement with circus and aerialist skills, and innovatively in 2019’s On Edge, which was also staged in Broad Street, parkour. Parkour is also a feature of Code with hoodie-wearing performers swinging and jumping over the heights of the stage.

Particularly stunning are the stunt cyclists who seem to defy gravity in jumping vertically on to barriers and platforms above them. Children may miss elements of the criminality in the narrative but they burst into spontaneous applause every time the cyclists display their magical leaps upwards.

The story is told in a poetic rap by Marcus ‘Matic Mouth’ Smith who plays a teacher amongst other roles.

One of his boys, Nicky (local schoolboy Esra Marmet, making his debut, marvellously focused), bullied at school, concerned about his mother (Krystal Dawn Campbell) and her lack of income, is easy prey for the charismatic drug kingpin JP (George Mayfield, an alumnus of On Edge) who encourages Nicky to carry out drug runs to dangerous high-rise buildings.

Nicky runs into thugs behind metal doors, surly drug customers and rival gangs intent on removing the competition. Smith’s vibrant poetic insights into Nicky’s motivation provides clues for the audience in spotting signs if their children are trapped by county lines gangs. There is hope for Nicky in the future, but for JP, always another youngster willing to trade morals for money.