Amelia Brown Archives - Page 5 of 23

My White Best Friend and Even More Letters Best Left Unsaid

The Bunker

Reviewed – 25th November 2019

★★★★

“a hugely powerful piece of theatre, a hugely important piece of theatre, and one that everyone must see”

On arrival at the Bunker Theatre we are handed wristbands, and enter into a theatre space transformed. There are three pieces of stage, in the corner is a DJ, and milling around are the audience, stood waiting, ready. Posters adorn the walls that highlight the show’s history and echoing the gig-like set up designed by Khadija Raza.

The first letter, by Rachel De-Lahay, the night’s curator, begins with a request to reshuffle the space, putting black and brown, queer and female bodies, front and centre.

This first letter is to her best friend, her white best friend, and it is read by Inès de Clercq. It is about the micro-aggressions, as well as the macro, the things people say that they don’t mean, that they don’t even see the problem in, the things that hurt all the more for it. The letter talks about white privilege, about how even a best friend can be part of the problem. “This is the fight you and your white best friend will never have,” writes De-Lahay, highlighting how much is left unsaid.

The second letter is to a “white ex situation-man-ship”, read by Tom Mothersdale, a white actor, who is reading these words for the first time. It touches upon the white privilege surrounding drug addiction and the way it is talked about. The letter and final letter of the evening starts, “Dear so-called allies.” Read by Susan Wokoma, our writer takes us back to Stonewall, to the erasure of a black and brown history and a trans history in the way Stonewall is remembered and celebrated today.

These letters are from different people, to different people, but they share a power. They are funny sometimes, and moving at other times, and generous and unforgiving and brave, spilling over with words that have been left on the tips of tongues too many times to count.

‘My White Best Friend (And Even More Letters Left Unsaid)’ is back by popular demand, with new letters and performers each night, and it isn’t hard to see why. The audience audibly responds to what is being read out, to a mis-pronounciation of a black name by a white actors, to things they recognise in their own experience, to things they will leave here with trying harder to recognise in their black and brown friends’ experiences. It is hard not to respond, like that, in the middle of the space, surrounded by people.

Directed by Milli Bhatia, this is a hugely powerful piece of theatre, a hugely important piece of theatre, and one that everyone must see.

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

My White Best Friend and Even More Letters Best Left Unsaid

The Bunker until 30th November

Previously reviewed at this venue:

My White Best Friend | ★★★★★ | March 2019

Funeral Flowers | ★★★½ | April 2019

Fuck You Pay Me | ★★★★ | May 2019

The Flies | ★★★ | June 2019

Have I Told You I’m Writing a Play About my Vagina? | ★★★★ | July 2019

Jade City | ★★★ | September 2019

Germ Free Adolescent | ★★★★ | October 2019

We Anchor In Hope | ★★★★ | October 2019

Before I Was A Bear | ★★★★★ | November 2019

I Will Still Be Whole (When You Rip Me In Half) | ★★★★ | November 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★★★★★

“Jacoba Williams is a powerhouse. She has an infectious energy, a warmth and an honesty and a bluntness that it is impossible not to connect with”

Before I Was A Bear is a surprising, funny, moving piece of brilliance on stage. A dancing bear opens the play, by which I mean Jacoba Williams, our performer, in a head to toe bear costume. She pulls the head off, and places it over a red light that shines through the bears eye sockets. This is just one example of Martha Godfrey’s fantastic lighting choices that constantly reinvent the space the play is taking place in.

“I’m Cally. And I used to be like you,” Williams says. She is talking, of course, about the time before she was a bear.

Eleanor Tindall’s play takes us on an unpredictable and captivating journey that delves into friendship, the awakening and navigation of sexuality, how older men look at young women, bad sex, good sex, straight sex, queer sex and celebrity worship to name but a few of the stops on the way. Based on the Greek myth of Callisto, Tindall uses a decidedly contemporary voice to talk about gender inequality, slut shaming and isolation.

Jacoba Williams is a powerhouse. She has an infectious energy, a warmth and an honesty and a bluntness that it is impossible not to connect with. Her lively direct address to the audience is splintered by moments of bear – scratching, trying and failing to open a packet of crisps, pain. These moments are shaped by different lighting combinations which silhouette and shadow and illuminate Williams alternately. The set, designed by Grace Venning, is minimal, two painted blocks with red undersides that echo the bear heads red eyes. The production is beautifully crafted as a whole, credit to the skilled and cohesive direction of Aneesha Srinivasan whose handling of pace is spot on.

‘Before I Was A Bear’ is a bold, comic, dark piece that is showcased in a flawless production brimming with talent.

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Tara Rooney

The Bunker

Reviewed – 25th November 2019

★★★★

“a hugely powerful piece of theatre, a hugely important piece of theatre, and one that everyone must see”

The first letter, by Rachel De-Lahay, the night’s curator, begins with a request to reshuffle the space, putting black and brown, queer and female bodies, front and centre.

These letters are from different people, to different people, but they share a power. They are funny sometimes, and moving at other times, and generous and unforgiving and brave, spilling over with words that have been left on the tips of tongues too many times to count.

Directed by Milli Bhatia, this is a hugely powerful piece of theatre, a hugely important piece of theatre, and one that everyone must see.

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

My White Best Friend and Even More Letters Best Left Unsaid

The Bunker until 30th November

Previously reviewed at this venue:

The Bunker

Reviewed – 14th November 2019

★★★★★

“Jacoba Williams is a powerhouse. She has an infectious energy, a warmth and an honesty and a bluntness that it is impossible not to connect with”

“I’m Cally. And I used to be like you,” Williams says. She is talking, of course, about the time before she was a bear.

‘Before I Was A Bear’ is a bold, comic, dark piece that is showcased in a flawless production brimming with talent.

Reviewed by Amelia Brown

Photography by Tara Rooney

Before I Was a Bear

The Bunker until 23rd November

Previously reviewed at this venue: