BRIXTON STORIES by Biyi Bandele. West Yorkshire Playhouse.

London

BRIXTON STORIES, or THE SHORT AND HAPPY LIFE OF OSSIE JONES
by Biyi Bandele

Courtyard Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse, co-presented with the Royal Shakespeare Company To 27 November-1 December 2001
Runs 1hr 15min No interval

TICKETS 020 7328 1000
Review Vera Lustig 17 October

Story-telling at its minimalist best; an affectionate stroll through Brixton's streets and the human imagination.Take a bare stage, a few hats; a quirky, tender magic-realist script, a brace of actors working in joyous harmony, narrating, playing countless roles; add shedloads of ingenuity, and there you have it – a gem of story-telling theatre in Roxanna Silbert's production (designer: Niki Turner).

The play, which draws on Bandele's novel The Street, describes the last, blissful day in the life of Ossie, a widowed immigration officer living with his daughter Nehushta. They watch a play (a kind of Pinter meets Reservoir Dogs), for which Nehushta has designed the set – an occasion all-too recognisable in its squirming embarrassment.

Brixton Stories has a labyrinthine structure of stories curled up inside each other, with a flashback to the nightmare that visited Ossie during a 15-year coma, of being entrapped by a mysterious, streetwise boy into taking a rap for his father's murder, of ending up in prison, of a fellow-inmate who…

As Ossie and Nehushta saunter through Brixton, with its quaintly raffish inhabitants: boozy schmoozers, preacher and heckler, Big Issue vendor complete with street-cry and – glorious, unashamed whimsy – a wordmonger who sells words: 'tintinnabulation, discombobulate, serendipity' to passers-by at ten pence each, Bandele's smiling fondness for eccentricity and for the succulent riches of the English language cloy somewhat. The play is replete with indigestible nuggets like, 'He…was blinded briefly by a shimmering daguerrotype of bleached-out feet…which in the astigmatic provenance of his eyes…'

Unsurprisingly, Jude Akuwudike stumbles a little over this verbiage, but he excels in conveying Ossie's wrily amused love for his daughter. Less burdened with verbal excess, Diane Parish, a selfless virtuoso, shape-shifts with consummate ease and wit.

Like Ossie at the play's close, I went to sleep that night feeling very, very happy.

Brixton Stories visits The West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) 27 November-1 December. TICKETS: 0113 213 7700

Ossie: Jude Akuwudike
Nehushta: Diane Parish

Director: Roxana Silbert
Designer: Niki Turner
Lighting: Simon Kemp
Sound: Rebecca Watts
Movement: Paul Hunter

2001-10-23 10:31:51