ELMINA'S KITCHEN to 6 September
National Theatre/Bath
ELMINA'S KITCHEN
by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Cottesloe Theatre In rep to 25 August 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 23 August 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 020 7452 3000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 August
then at Bath Theatre Royal 1-6 September 2003
Mon-Wed 7.30pm;Thu & Sat 8pm Fri 6pm & 9pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Post-show discussion 4 September
TICKETS: 01225 448844
Fear and hope in Hackney where violence lurks alongside the laughs, in a first-rate production.Two presences from the past loom over Kwame Kwei-Armah's new play. Deli's mother, after whom his eat-in, takeaway and delivery West Indian eaterie in Hackney's named, looks sternly from a huge black-and-white photograph over the proceedings. As a picture, it's far larger than the African-American heroic gallery decorating his back wall.
And there's Elmina Castle, the Portuguese fortress in Ghana, 15th century holding station for African slaves. Yet both as we first see it, and in its smart post-interval fast-food guise as Elmina's Plantain Hut, Deli's food-business is an attempt at order in the protection, violent debt-collection and gun-respect world represented by regular customer Digger, and fatally attractive to Deli's 19-year old son Ashley.
Deli's done time himself; his dad Clifton's a streetfighter. And his brother is killed in prison. Only sassy Anastasia, who's experienced Black-on-Black violence, supports Deli's attempts to avoid the destructive life-cycle.
Kwei-Armah fills in a reality behind the news reports: Black male teenagers falling behind in educational achievement, proportionally more excluded from school (Deli finds his son's college textbooks thrown out in the rubbish), looking for the magic 'Respect' through gang-membership and a gun.
What's surprising is the humour he injects through much of the play. At first it might seem too good to be possible, given the burning and killing outside. And eventually it wears away, in the downbeat end and a final moment that makes starkly clear the psychologically calculating, emotion-free business of murder in this society.
Future productions will show if Kwei-Armah holds humour and violence in justifiable balance. They certainly seem so in the hands of Angus Jackson's fine cast. Patterson Joseph's Deli is constantly having to hold his ground in argument, subverting his cracked paternal authority when he turns physically on his own dad. From Oscar James' Baygee, merrily toting a guitar or sternly defying opposition, to Emmanuel Idowu who makes clear the self-respect that well-funded gang membership can buy (the one unconvincing element he acquires this lifestyle mighty fast, then it disappears at his next appearance, making it seem a 'point' rather than part of life) Elmina's Kitchen is superbly played.
Digger: Shaun Parkes
Deli: Patterson Joseph
Ashley: Emmanuel Idowu
Baygee: Oscar James
Clifton: George Harris
Anastasia: Dona Croll
Director: Angus Jackson
Designer: Bunny Christie
Lighting: Hartley T A Kemp
Sound:Neil; Alexander
Music: Neim McArthur
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Dialect coach: Claudette Williams
2003-08-18 08:57:37