theatreVOICE

I am moving house from Hackney to Edmonton. Previously my former home was just 10 minutes walk from Murder Mile – notorious for shootings and stabbings of black brothas. Now, I am disturbed to read regular stories about young black men being fatally stabbed in my new area – clearly my aspirations of a postcode upgrade has fallen by the wayside. The chilling realisation is that many of these stabbings seem to be triggered by pure “stuypidness”: a stroll into the wrong postcode has fatal consequences because your area is squabbling with another over goodness knows what. I heard another that a teen refused to hand over his brick of a mobile phone to a gang at the bus stop: his was barely surviving by its bootstraps of sellotape. I am still baffled that someone can be shanked because they looked at the perpetrator “the wrong way”. These senseless murders are destroying families and cultivating legacies of grief and loathing. And the black community is lamenting about a generation of brers being wiped out before its very eyes.Random, Debbie Tucker Green’s latest play, unpacks the effect of these killings on an anonymous family in inner city London. What started as an ordinary day for them about their routine business is spiked with madness and mayhem by the time evening arrives. The bubbling cauldron of different vernaculars is potent in delivering a fresh experience of this agonizing topic. From the lilting patois of the Caribbean to the pulsing spit fire phrases of the teens: Debbie’s strength is the riddim of her poetical sparseness throughout the one hander that was superbly delivered by Nathaniel Martello-White. I have been amused by some comments in national reviews on the difficulty of understanding the play because of the strong accents and slang. My reaction?
 

Git over it, blood.
 

You has to learn how dat lingo goes: smash your circles of familiarity and live on the wild side because dere is an underbelly of communities wivin London dat don’t speak your way and dere windows to da world need to be opened up on da stage.
 

Blay – tant. 

But, I digress. Part of this language mixing is generational: some of it is the determination of second and third generations to forge a strong cultural identity separate from their immigrant parents as Martello-White showed when he played all ten characters on the night. Usually Nadine Marshall is in the starring role, but she was indisposed that evening.
 

Martello-White found particular mannerisms to distinguish the characters where, as Mum, he has a slight stoop, pinched face, and folding of the arms to launch a lecture. Sister is all up in our face with the swagger and the rolling of the hips and Brother is infused with a beguiling sleepiness and laid back attitude that makes him horizontal.
 

Martello-White was comedic in his portrayal of the family that started the morning arguing about burnt porridge and Mum chastising Sister for her lack of clothing to work. Delighted peals of laughter from the audience melt into tense silence when the police announce in the late afternoon Brother’s stabbing during his lunch break at college. Green threads these events by the disturbing revelation that there is no explanation for Brother’s murder and no witnesses willing to disclose information.
 

Director Sacha Wares’ economical production does not use any props or scenery. Martello-White read the script on a blackened stage. On the one hand this is disconcerting as one goes to theatre to visually savour other worlds.  However, I thought that Random, which was a 50 minute play, succeeded without it as the attention focuses on the story and the stark detail in Green’s language to describe unfolding events, and Martello-White’s remarkable performance.
 

One of the most moving scenes was Sister’s return to Brother’s bedroom – to shut his door and relish his “stink”, scattered pirate DVDs lying around, and Halle Berry poster. Out of this disaster, she now cherishes the same phenomenon that she had cussed out several hours before, irritated that he refused to lend her his mobile.

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

The work is urgent with a strong resonance: indeed the killings, random or not, must stop.
 

This play is on at the Royal Court Theatre in London until April 12; www.royalcourttheatre.com

�

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 12:16 pm, by Uchenna Izundu and is filed under Audio 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.