WORLD MUSIC. To 7 June.
Sheffield
WORLD MUSIC
by Steve Waters
Crucible Theatre To 7 June 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 4,7 June 2.30pm
Audio-described & BSL Signed: 5 June
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 0114 249 6000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 June
Disharmonies between Europe and Africa.Bravely, the Crucible mounts two new plays – this first certainly no easy crowd-pleaser - on its main-stage (along with two studio co-productions, forming a 'Sheffield First' season).
In the Crucible Studio, personal relationships would have been the focus (many scenes are duologues) of Steve Waters' dissection of Euro-decision-making on Africa. Directed with bold panache by Josie Rourke on Christopher Oram's bare set, the larger space absorbs character intimacies, emphasising the immensity of decisions made by mere people. Settled convictions clash against official complacency and uncovered secrets.
Geoff Fallon brings his backpack of youthful African connections to his work as a 1990s MEP (lightly fictionalised, the play's set against the Rwanda/Burundi slaughter of a decade ago). His blood-brother Kiyabe from that past and Florence, the African-born Brussels airport catering-worker he takes home to bed in the present, both have unexpected violent connections – one willingly, the other under nightmarish compulsion.
Also from the past – it's a relationship that doesn't develop in the midst of the wide-open stage - is his undefined feeling for Odette (ironically, the inhabitants of Waters' Irundi were given names by Catholic missionaries from colonial days).
Nigel Lindsay and Paul Ready share Geoff's callow eagerness across a generation, while Nonso Anozie gives the African war-maker a cheerful energy that sits easily with news of his involvement in wholesale murders. Bureaucracy gets a good name from Sebastian Harcombe and Sara Powell, sharp-suited Socialist MEPs whose Irundi Report makes Geoff so irate.
Rourke's pacy production moves with confident busy-ness between Brussels and Irundi. At times she lets Geoff, and occasionally others, weaken their arguments by overmuch shouting. Playing the bedroom scenes of Geoff and Florence in a corner stage segment created intimacy for my area of the audience, but I wondered how it would look from more distant seats.
Nikki Amuka-Bird carries the emotional weight in Florence with a precise mix of concealment and revelation, passing from anonymity to sexual willingness before coming fully real to Geoff in the revelation that kills his self-confidence, silencing this voluble politician and leaving him staring into space. In a play where Europeans busily and impersonally decide about Africa, the irony lies in this quiet African woman teaching Europe a thing or two.
Geoff Fallon: Nigel Lindsay
Tim Fallon/Young Geoff: Paul Ready
Paulette James: Sara Powell
Alan Carswell: Sebastian Harcombe
Jean Kiyabe: Nonso Anozie
Odette: Assly Zandry
Florence: Nikki Amuka-Bird
Director: Josie Rourke
Designer: Christopher Oram
Lighting: Neil Austin
2003-06-05 16:48:25