TORN. To 2 August.
London.
TORN
by Femi Oguns.
Arcola Theatre (Arcola 1) 27 Arcola Street E8 2DJ To 2 August 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7503 1646.
www.arcolatheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 28 June.
Torn, reborn, rips through the Arcola’s main space.
Shorn of several minutes and a couple of minor characters, Femi Oguns’ play has turned the corner from the small Arcola 2 to its large main space, a well-earned journey, in a year.
Apart from Oguns’ David, the African-descended Black Briton whose love for Natasha, Black but from a Caribbean family, this is a new cast. And Raz Shaw’s production is radically different in style from the original.
On a floor covered by a faint, greyed-out union flag, it’s entirely abstract, using only a couple of anonymous plastic chairs when absolutely necessary. Characters cross the stage between scenes, passing props between each other; during the action, those not involved can be seen behind the surrounding gauze of Hannah Clark’s deliberately anonymous setting - a whirling world where nothing remains private.
The space marks out separation. David and Natasha receive verbal lashings from relatives, interrogations that humiliate a pair whose brief meetings find them speaking across the stage’s full-length or coming together only to be separated by the Arcola’s central pillar.
All this predicts spatially the outcome of a love battered by prejudices between African and Caribbean. Oguns tempers this with the two White characters: Scottish Kirsty who looks from outside, unaware of a split in what seems to her one Black community – whose manner she adopts unawares. And Russian Freddy, working alongside Natasha’s father Malcolm, waiting sorely for the moment he can be reunited with his family.
Shaw ratchets-up the script several degrees, with intense comedy followed by menace. Try Jocelyn Jee Esien as David’s guardian sister Kemi for ferocious hilarity followed some time after by pure threat. And Wil Johnson’s Malcolm, eventually unfolding his past regrets and secret, moving from mere stubbornness to fury.
The abstraction doesn’t serve every aspect well, leaving the minor role of Dominique, as the African bride Kemi wants for David, less defined, for example. Still, there’s a new, pacy energy to this crackingly-performed production, its bare-stage creating a Shakespearean mood for a Romeo and Juliet who have to live on, defeated, yet, in Natasha’s final self-identification as simply Black, providing a sense of optimism.
Malcolm: Wil Johnson.
Natasha: Kelle Bryan.
Freddy: Richard Hollis.
David: Femi Oguns.
Kemi: Jocelyn Jee Esien.
Bayo: Kwaku Ankomah.
Bola: Antonia Okonma.
Kirsty: Brooke Kinsella.
Dominique: Michelle Asante.
Director: Raz Shaw.
Designer: Hannah Clark.
Lighting: AnnaWatson.
Sound: Adrienne Quartly.
Movement/Assistant director: Lootie Johnasen-Bibby.
2008-06-30 01:27:35