This
was a great National Theatre Live production, a small play performed in the
round that takes us through slices of life from around the African diaspora.
What seems to begin as a series of floating vignettes is slowly connected
through personal and cultural ties, and the whole thing comes together in
surprising ways.
Over
the course of a day, we drop in on Black barber shops in England, Nigeria,
Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. While men wait to get their hair
cut, they shoot the shit, tell jokes, debate the upcoming Barcelona vs. Chelsea
match, discuss oppression, and reveal details about their own histories.
Similarities echo across the nations, and conversations that begin in the shop
in one country seem to finish in another. Through it all, we are anchored
within these community bedrocks.
Similar
to National Theatre Live’s Jane Eyre,
this is a show that creates its worlds inventively, economically – massive
moving sets won’t do you much good in the round. Instead, each shop is
established through its particular assortment of barber’s chairs, introduced by
the ensemble singing and dancing out the names of the different cities where
they are set. Actors make slight changes to their costumes onstage to pop up as
different characters in different countries, changing their accents along with
their hats.
At
the onset, it may seem like a simple play told through conversations between
barbers and customers, scenarios combined with thematic monologues and a dash
of personal backstory. (Side note: even if this was “all” it was, it would
still be a pretty engrossing play. I really enjoy seeing the various debates in
the barber shop, such as the discussions over racial slurs or arguing over
whether it’s racist to prefer dating either Black girls or white girls.) But as
the play goes on, things become so rich and interconnected beyond the excellent
qualities it’s displayed already. We see the same ideas filtered through
different cultural lenses (debate over the N-word in England becomes a debate
over the K-word in South Africa,) jokes whose subjects change depending on
tribe affiliations. What’s more, with the diaspora, we see character ties
carrying over from country to country, with the characters in England having
family members or old family friends frequenting the barber shops in Nigeria or
Uganda. And everyone, regardless of where they’re from, is invented in the
outcome of the football (soccer) match.
The
cast is strong, with, again, many of them playing multiple roles. No one jumped
out as immediately familiar to me, although I had several “I know I’ve seen
that face before” moments and consulted IMDb afterwards to recall which one had
a minor role in Love, Actually or
which ones guest starred on an episode of Doctor
Who. For me, the most recognizable actor was Cyril I. Nri, who played the
Shopkeeper on the Sarah Jane Adventures
story “Lost in Time.”
Really
great play with a lot of food for thought. Most of the National Theatre Live
showings so far have featured famous plays, new plays based on famous source
material, and/or plays featuring famous actors, and I really appreciated
getting something so new and original.
Warnings
Language
(including racial slurs,) drinking/drug references, sexual references,
references to violence, and thematic elements.
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