THE HOUNDING OF DAVID OLUWALE. To 4 April.
Tour.
THE HOUNDING OF DAVID OLUWALE
by Kester Aspden adapted by Oladipo Agboluaje.
Eclipse Theatre Tour to 4 April 2009.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 February at Birmingham Rep Theatre.
Solid trudge through a moving story.
Tour.
THE HOUNDING OF DAVID OLUWALE
by Kester Aspden adapted by Oladipo Agboluaje.
Eclipse Theatre Tour to 4 April 2009.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 February at Birmingham Rep Theatre.
Solid trudge through a moving story.
The 38 years of David Oluwale’s life were divided almost exactly between Nigeria and Leeds, where he was persecuted, and possibly drowned, by two policemen who bullied him, physically and psychologically, like older boys with a frightened child.
No doubt Eclipse Theatre are interested because of Oluwale’s ethnicity. It’s key to events, but Oluwale might have been dubbed a ‘natural victim’ (in an age when ‘contributory negligence’ was part of the mental landscape in rape cases) and anyway have been a magnet for people believing their uniform was a license to bully.
In Daniel Francis’s lumbering, sympathetic performance, Oluwale is happy enough while his mother is around to protect him (her blessing as he leaves for Britain, full of sadly inaccurate prophecies, is deeply moving, late in the action when we’ve seen the ‘future’ reality). Always irresponsible, alone in an alien environment he couldn’t cope.
The play makes clear, if clumsily incorporated, references to late-sixties Leeds cleaning-up its act, urban regeneration meaning removing ‘derelicts’ from its streets. Previously subjected to arrests and the ‘cure’ of electro-convulsive therapy which left him limping and yet more confused, Oluwale slept in doorways. Had he allowed himself to be driven from Leeds’ centre he might have survived. But he doggedly returned – less from obstinacy than seeking somewhere familiar, matching childhood’s maternal security.
So the sleeping in doorways continued, and the persecution. Eventually a young constable, not institutionalised into racism, blew the whistle and an investigation led to retribution of a sort. This is by far the weakest part of Oladipo Agboluage’s dramatisation, and Dawn Walton’s over-literal, dully acted production - Francis and Clare Perkins as David’s mother Alice apart.
Ryan Early’s investigator varies no conviction, his emotional involvement carried to an excess which would have lost all respect. Just a couple of moments seize attention. Agboluage allows David to talk ‘posthumously’ to Perkins; there’s a moment when he flashes from his composure in these scenes to his limping, pained and rumpled life. And one where, talking to a fellow Nigerian, he suddenly cowers when a policeman appears. There moments show the power lacking elsewhere.
Chike/Jones: Howard Charles.
Perkins: Ryan Early.
David Oluwale: Daniel Francis.
Kitching: Steve Jackson.
Ellerker: Luke Jardine.
Kayode/Ade: Richard Pepple.
Alice/Patience: Clare Perkins.
Janet/Meg: Laura Power.
Director: Dawn Walton.
Designer: Emma Wee.
Lighting: Johanna Town.
Sound: Mic Pool.
Movement director: Stephen Medlin.
Dialect coach: Neil Swain.
Lindy Hop instructor: Jeanefer Jean Charles.
Fight director: Kate Waters.
Dramaturg: Alex Chisholm.
Assistant director: Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway.
2009-02-27 00:00:06