A theatre company has been embroiled in a gentrification row after it announced a series of £55-a-head “immersive” Cockney-themed dinner parties to be held in a traditionally working-class area.

The firm apologised after it released promotional material that showed a cast of tracksuited characters, including a pregnant woman drinking and smoking and a tattooed man striking an aggressive pose, in a pub.

The Cockney’tivity Christmas dinners are scheduled to take place across three weeks in December in an “authentic Hackney boozer” in London’s East End. Attendees will get a three course meal and a “Cockney Christmas story” from the actors.

The company, Zebedee Productions, said it would be a “proper celebration of east London culture” and said many of the people involved had links to the East End. But critics pointed out the entry fee meant that, while local working-class people were being sent up, it was unlikely they would be able to afford to be in on the joke.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The theatre company has been accused of stereotyping. Photograph: Zebedee Productions

“The local people, they just get laughed at, they get joked at and there’s no respect there,” said Joe Ellis, who was born and grew up in the East End.

Josh Clarke, who helped run a campaign to gain asset of community value status for a local pub to save it from closure, said: “These establishments want to keep a certain kind of person out. There’s no one involved in that who said: ‘Let’s respect Cockney culture.’”

Ellis said there was a divide between the locals and those who moved in more recently: “They’re sticking up two fingers to the local community and profiteering off the local people.”



Susan Clarke, who was born and bred nearby, said the show’s promotional material relied on stereotypes of Cockneys. “It angers me when you see things like this. We are not all benefit scrounging slobs going round saying ‘alright mate’ and talking in rhyming slang,” she said.

Another Hackney woman added: “Pubs and other places working-class people used to go to have been closed down en masse, and now instead they’re hosting events that cost as much as some people have to live on a week.”

Aisha, who asked for her surname to be withheld, said the event was distasteful and “just another symptom of the massive social cleansing going on in the area. It’s just the epitome of what’s been happening all over the UK for the past decade - a sort of working-class tourism.”

Zebedee’s owner, Zoe Wellman, defended the production, saying: “My mum was born and bred in Gants Hill, and I’ve lived in Hackney for the last 10 years ... and Darren [a partner in Zebedee] is a Wood Green boy through and through.

“We’re all really excited about what we’ve been working on and, as a small theatre and production company, this is a project really close to home. Being from the area ourselves, it was never a question of poking fun at a stereotype and those who live in the area, however we are truly sorry for any offence caused.”

Aisha said the actors’ backgrounds did not matter to her and bemoaned the stereotypes they were portraying. “There are no celebrations of working-class culture – we’re represented through shows about benefit cheats, Jeremy Kyle and things like this play.

“I grew up surrounded by people who were eloquent and intellectual, and also happened to be working class. I want to see that represented, instead of this idea that we’re all tracksuit-wearing dossers.”



The controversy follows similar rows, including that over the Job Centre bar, which was criticised for insensitivity after opening up in an old job centre in south London, and the Cereal Killer cafe, which serves breakfast cereal at £3 a bowl in one of London’s poorest boroughs and was the object of a large protest in 2014.