Tag Archives: Anna Reid

FOR BLACK BOYS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE HUE GETS TOO HEAVY

★★★★

Garrick Theatre

FOR BLACK BOYS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE HUE GETS TOO HEAVY at the Garrick Theatre

★★★★

“a beautifully poetic and bold piece of theatre”

For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, takes your brain and your heart. It is a rollercoaster party for all, as Ryan Calais Cameron’s award-winning production returns to the West End for a limited season.

Starring in the now iconic roles in this new production of FBB, are a powerful new blend of talented actors: Tobi King Bakare (Onyx), Shakeel Haakim (Pitch) making his professional debut, Fela Lufadeju (Jet), Albert Magashi (Sable), Mohammed Mansaray (Obsidian) and Posi Morakinyo (Midnight). The cast of six young Black men are all in sync with each other and shine with their own identities and characters, with laugh out loud humour and exposed vulnerability.

It makes for a beautifully poetic and bold piece of theatre.

 

 

The show opens with a stunning piece of slow motion movement which then explodes with the colourful individual characters telling their stories of the beauty and burden of being black – and just being a human. This is a story of manhood and masculinity in Black Britain today, flowing through dance, monologues and music.

We meet the six young men in what appears to be a safe space therapy group telling their bravura stories about father figures or lack of, and macho sex. They are all about “how to be the right type of Black man” showing power and strength. But we also see snippets of their childhoods when they were bullied or not chased by the girls in kiss chase – because of the colour of their skin. They are visceral, and the aggressive and powerful choreography by Theophilus O. Bailey, shows the perception of angry young Black men, and how they articulate themselves when words fail them.

In act two, the set designed by Anna Reid, opens up into a fantasy fluorescent playground where the men feel safe to tell their truths with pain and honesty. The choreography softens but is equally as powerful. Self-aware and touchingly naïve, they talk poetically of their mothers’ eyes, their need for love, love found and love lost, abuse, peer pressure and sexuality….. as they each expose their raw vulnerability.

 

 

And that’s when they start to sing. As their trust grows their harmonies soar, as they show tenderness and emotion towards each other. Together these men are electric.

FBB is a stunningly slick show directed by the writer Ryan Calais Cameron, with music and sound by Nicola T. Chang.

In Cameron’s, For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy, the message to those who have considered suicide is to learn to love yourself – and breathe. It is a very current and universal story – young men and mental health. It is about all young men who have considered suicide.


FOR BLACK BOYS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE HUE GETS TOO HEAVY at the Garrick Theatre

Reviewed on 7th March 2024

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Johan Persson

 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HAMNET | ★★★ | October 2023
THE CROWN JEWELS | ★★★ | August 2023
ORLANDO | ★★★★ | December 2022
MYRA DUBOIS: DEAD FUNNY | ★★★★ | September 2021

FOR BLACK BOYS WHO

FOR BLACK BOYS WHO

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll

★★★★

Hampstead Theatre

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“the dialogue is whip smart – intelligently written and delivered in a natural manner that draws plenty of unexpected laughs”

Hampstead Theatre’s ambitious revival of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ’n’ Roll follows the intersecting lives of Jan and Max, a Czech PhD student at Cambridge and his Marxist professor. Starting in 1968 with the Prague Spring and closing just after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, it covers vast ground, temporally and thematically, but primarily examines the socio-political challenges of Czechoslovakia as a satellite state of the Soviet Union through Jan and Max’s diverging perspectives. It’s pretty cerebral, not least because the academic discussions on Marxism are often only given respite by academic discussions on Sappho, but there is balance to be had with emotive love stories interwoven throughout.

There’s a lot to unpack, whether Czech independence is familiar to you or not. The script is densely filled with characters, storylines and dialogue covered at such a cantering pace it can be difficult to keep up. Jumps forward in time require heavy exposition to make sense of when and where we are. But the dialogue is whip smart – intelligently written and delivered in a natural manner that draws plenty of unexpected laughs.

Stoppard describes this play as a love story primarily between Jan and Rock and Roll music. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Jan is sweetly enamoured by the Velvet Underground and Nico, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones – taking just a suitcase of records with him back from Cambridge to Prague in ‘68. Director Nina Raine brings this to life in the staging, blasting the familiar tunes as the scenes change and using Brenock O’Connor as an ethereal Syd Barrett to hop across the stage like the spirit of rock and roll.

“a timely revival from one of British theatre’s greatest playwrights”

It’s Jan’s singular fixation with Czech rockers Plastic People of the Universe that drive him from youthful idealism towards dissidence for the ruling regime. Almost every scene at times is peppered with ‘plastic people’. His eventual criticism of the communist regime puts him at odds with the fearsome Max. Nathaniel Parker’s Max feels intensely unlikable – an old man stuck in his ways, unbudgeable in his convictions. Czech independence from soviet influence feels viscerally modern at the current moment with Ukraine at war for the right to self determination. Max’s dogmatic insistence in the preeminence of communism has added resonance now.

These intellectual battles are expertly balanced against emotional ones. Nancy Carroll as Eleanor, gives an indelibly powerful performance as Max’s equally accomplished wife whose specialism in sapphic poetry is at odds with the rationalism of her partner. When she talks of Sappho writing of an un-mechanical man you can’t help but think she is imagining the very opposite of her husband. It’s clever therefore that in Act II Carroll plays Esme, Eleanor and Max’s daughter, who harbours a lifelong attraction to the more emotional Jan.

Set in traverse, it is never noticeable that the cast are playing to the audience on both sides. The large stage is fulsomely decked out by Anna Reid as the grand interior of a Cambridge college suitable for a professor of rank just as well as a poky Prague flat.

Rock ’n’ Roll is a timely revival from one of British theatre’s greatest playwrights. Whether you’re a Syd Barrett super fan or Marxist intellectual there will be plenty to mull over long after the final tableau.

 

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 12th December 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Manuel Harlan


 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Anthropology | ★★★★ | September 2023
Stumped | ★★★★ | June 2023
Linck & Mülhahn | ★★★★ | February 2023
The Art of Illusion | ★★★★★ | January 2023
Sons of the Prophet | ★★★★ | December 2022
Blackout Songs | ★★★★ | November 2022
Mary | ★★★★ | October 2022
The Fellowship | ★★★ | June 2022

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Rock ‘n’ Roll

Click here to see our Recommended Shows page