★★★★

“an energetic and stylish play that could easily become a classic”

Adapted by esteemed British playwright Roy Williams, The Lonely Londoners at the Jermyn Street Theatre is the first staging of British-Trinidadian Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel. It’s somewhat surprising that the material hasn’t been adapted before, given the popularity of Windrush stories like Andrea Levy’s Small Island, adapted for the small screen in 2009 and staged at the National Theatre in 2019. That being said, it’s a pleasure to see the material in Williams’ hands with a script full of clever dialogue and a plot that, through the exploration of individual stories, allows for variety and nuance that creates a sophisticated, textural piece.

The drama centres around Moses Aloetta, Gamba Cole, a charismatic and well-connected Caribbean emigré with a cigarette surgically attached to his hand as he and his friends try to make their way in London. We meet the happy-go-lucky Big City, Gilbert Kyem Jnr, full of malapropisms based on London’s streets and boroughs, eager to put on a dance for the community. There’s Lewis, Tobi Bakare, recently out of work and worried about the arrival of his wife Agnes, Shannon Hayes, and mother, Carol Moses. And finally Henry ‘Galahad’ Oliver, fresh off the boat train with nothing but his pyjamas and toothbrush ready to take London by storm. Moses connects and grounds the group but is haunted by the image of the love he left behind in Trinidad. As the group gain experience of the city and its aggressive inhabitants, fear creeps in that this could all end in ruin. Fortunately, whilst the end does indeed bring sadness for some, it is not wholly an unhappy ending.

Performances from the whole cast are impeccable, each demonstrating an impressive emotional range in under two hours. The men are all degrees of cheeky and charming, lost and lonesome, and aggressive and angry. The women display similar range, gleeful at their small triumphs and despairing of the challenges they face. This is perhaps most dramatically exemplified by Romario Simpson as Galahad as we see his realisation from wide-eyed new arrival to a literally battered and bruised shell – his monologue denouncing the English for their unchecked racism is a powerful performance. It’s also worth praising the authentic Caribbean accents, coached to perfection by Aundrea Fudge.

There are, however, some odd directorial choices which break the drama. The dialogue is so rich that there are no ambiguities – these characters are talking from the heart at all times and we understand their fears, hopes and frustrations through what they say. Director Ebenezer Bamgboye’s choice to also include elements of physical theatre to show, for example, how the men support each other when the going gets tough is not necessary; we have already heard it.

On the other hand, the inclusion of contemporary music of black origin throughout the piece (Protoje’s ‘Who Knows’ beautifully sung live by Aimee Powell, a couple of Michael Kiwanuka tracks and more) subtly reminds you that, whilst this is a historical drama, the themes and experiences portrayed are, unfortunately, not resigned to history books.

Lighting by Elliot Griggs enhances the drama – whether through slow fade-ins that subtly draw your attention across the stage away from the action, or through dramatic bursts of light that ignite a fight. There is also clever use of flash bulbs on the back of the stage which are programmed to situate scenes by their postcodes, or show a graphic image which add fun and interest to the studio theatre.

The Lonely Londoners is an energetic and stylish play that could easily become a classic just like its source material. Although speaking to a specific moment in time, it’s themes of migration, racism and isolation resonate across the years. But it is the hopeful message of friendship and resilience, particularly through humour, that set this show apart and make it an enjoyable as well as educational watch.

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB at the Arcola Theatre

★★★★★

“Challenging, stimulating, playful, thrilling, but above all, it defies categorisation.”

At curtain call, Al Nedjari, the actor playing the writer of “When You Walk Over My Tomb” announces that there is somebody in the audience ‘pretending to be me’. He invites the real-life Sergio Blanco onstage. We are almost convinced it is this way round, such is the blurring of truth and fiction. We have forgotten by now that Nedjari isn’t, in fact, Blanco, and that Charlie MacGechan and Danny Scheinmann are not their onstage characters too. The acting is so natural and quasi-improvised that we have been utterly drawn into the surreal, stark, seductive fiction.

Two hours earlier, the trio emerge from within the audience and introduce themselves as ghosts, recounting how they each died, before slipping into their characters for the main narrative. “When You Walk Over My Tomb” recounts the author’s last days having decided to arrange his own assisted suicide in a Swiss clinic run by Dr. Godwin (Scheinmann). He has resolved to donate his body to a convicted necrophiliac, Khaled (MacGechan), interned in the Bethlem psychiatric hospital in London (“what difference is there between donating my body to science and donating it to someone who might find pleasure in it when I’m dead”). The play unfolds, alternating between the playwright’s encounters with the doctor and the young man who is lustfully preparing to receive his corpse after his death. We lose count of the taboos that are broken as we try to keep up with the uncomfortable yet dizzyingly fascinating and often beautiful prose. There are several references to Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and, indeed, this play is its own chimera – a monster compounded of incongruous parts. Simultaneously tragic and hopeful. A love letter to life but lusting for death. It even has its own epitaph rather than an epilogue.

“the acting skills of Nedjari, MacGechan and Scheinmann alchemise the complex material into gorgeous bitesize pieces of entertainment that highlight every line of the brilliant material”

“When You Walk Over My Tomb” follows the success of Blanco’s OFFIE award winning ‘Thebes Land’ and ‘The Rage of Narcissus’ at the Arcola Theatre. One of the world’s most performed living Spanish-language writers, his current work is brilliantly adapted and directed by Daniel Goldman who has teased out the themes of death, eroticism, passion, desire, mortality and the afterlife with a surgeon’s skill while still dressing the harrowing subject matter in swathes of humour. Cultural references are thrown in left right and centre from Shakespeare to the Brothers Grimm, Byron, Shelly, Flaubert, Bach, Lennon. Religious iconography becomes pornography, while a drowned child’s discarded Playmobil toy adopts the same potent symbolism of Yorick’s skull.

It is as though the concept of the play within a play is being reflected from parallel mirrors and stretched to infinity. But the acting skills of Nedjari, MacGechan and Scheinmann alchemise the complex material into gorgeous bitesize pieces of entertainment that highlight every line of the brilliant material. Blanco takes time out to explain certain matters, such as the subtle differences between euthanasia and assisted suicide. The doctor recounts some cases (real life or fictional we’re never quite sure) of necrophilia. But it is never expositional. The cast involve the audience at times, or address the tech box, giving cues to the operator – but it is never contrived. The actors blur their real selves with their on-stage personas, but we never lose sight of the distinction. It has been dubbed autofiction and, although the audience doesn’t question it, the actors often wryly step out of character, interrupting the action to ask what aspects of this show are actually real.

Challenging, stimulating, playful, thrilling, but above all, it defies categorisation. One can describe the patterns of a kaleidoscope, but it is only when you hold it up to the eye that you grasp the true beauty. “When You Walk Over My Tomb” is one of those pieces of theatre that has to be seen to be believed. Original, perverse, intoxicating. Funny and sad; it will make you look at life another way. And death. And what lies between and possibly after. A must-see triumph. I bet you’re dying to see it!

THE LONELY LONDONERS at Jermyn Street Theatre

★★★★

“an energetic and stylish play that could easily become a classic”

THE LONELY LONDONERS at Jermyn Street Theatre

Reviewed on 5th March 2024

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Alex Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE LONELY LONDONERS

THE LONELY LONDONERS

WHEN YOU PASS OVER MY TOMB at the Arcola Theatre

★★★★★

“Challenging, stimulating, playful, thrilling, but above all, it defies categorisation.”

“the acting skills of Nedjari, MacGechan and Scheinmann alchemise the complex material into gorgeous bitesize pieces of entertainment that highlight every line of the brilliant material”