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Brenda's Got A Baby

Brenda’s Got a New Baby

★★★

New Diorama Theatre

BRENDA’S GOT A BABY at the New Diorama Theatre

★★★

Brenda's Got A Baby

“Come for the comedy and side-line the sincerity and you’ll be hard-pressed not to enjoy this show.”

Brenda’s Got a Baby, an original work premiering at the New Diorama Theatre, borrows its title from a 2pac song. The song tells the harrowing tale of a young, impoverished girl who has a baby at twelve that she cannot support and quite literally throws away. Through the story of one girl, 2Pac seeks to lay bare something truthful about the black experience. Jessica Hagan’s piece flips this on its head in this comedy-drama, with emphasis on the comedy.

Brenda, in Hagan’s reimagining, is the presumably white classmate of Ama, a British-Ghanaian, middle class, ex-grammar school girl from North London. Brenda had a baby at 16, plus four more between school and shortly before Ama’s 28th birthday when they bump into each other at a supermarket. It’s here the story begins, with Ama, a high-flyer fulfilling everything her mother and school expected of her, looking down her nose at Brenda. This meeting starts a chain of events that cause Ama to spiral and ask whether her fancy job, new flat and, on the surface, perfect boyfriend offer her everything she needs before she hits thirty.

The first act introduces us to Ama (Anita-Joy Uwajeh), her family and boyfriend. Everything looks great for her and is approached with realism. But just before the interval, Ama decides she must have a baby by thirty and a bomb-like countdown clock appears above the stage, signalling a descent in the second act to totally exaggerated, telenovela style theatre where Ama is driven mad, pretty literally, by her ticking clock.

It’s an incongruous mix. Not just for the fact that it feels like two different pieces smashed together, but for the way serious and sincere topics are treated against the farce. Ama’s sister Jade’s struggle with fibroids seems to make an important point about women’s health, and in particular black women’s health outcomes. But this plays out, briefly, and without much depth, against a bizarre episode where Ama tricks her sister’s husband to come with her to her fertility clinic appointment masquerading as her own husband.

It’s difficult to know what to make of this show. There is plenty that feels underdeveloped, not least the infantilising set of rainbow puzzle pieces. But the comedy is good, both in its writing and performance under Anastasia Osei-Kuffour’s direction. Edward Kagutuzi as Jade’s husband Skippy is hilarious as a sweet and well meaning wannabe Christian rapper, and his physical comedy with Ama’s boyfriend Dami (Jordan Duvigneau) receives plenty of uproarious laughter. It is just that these comedic moments are so outlandish, and the plot twist so wild and unexpected, that the rest of the more serious content fades into obscurity.

Come for the comedy and side-line the sincerity and you’ll be hard-pressed not to enjoy this show.


BRENDA’S GOT A BABY at the New Diorama Theatre

Reviewed on 8th November 2023

by Amber Woodward

Photography by Cesare De Giglio


 

 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

After The Act | ★★★★★ | March 2023
Project Dictator | ★★½ | April 2022

Brenda’s Got a Baby

Brenda’s Got a Baby

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Project Dictator

★★½

New Diorama Theatre

Project Dictator

Project Dictator

New Diorama Theatre

Reviewed – 6th April 2022

★★½

 

“Rhum + Clay have presented us with a rumination rather than a finished thought”

 

On first leaving the auditorium, I really have no idea what I just watched. And the journey home doesn’t lend much clarity to be honest. But for the sake of explaining it to you: In the first half, Spooner and Wells play-act a tyrannical take-over, and in the second, they themselves suffer under a tyrant. But this is a major over-clarification; the story itself feels a lot more bewildering.

In the first half, co-creators, directors and performers Julian Spooner and Matt Wells perform a play within the play which Wells’ character has written, in which he plays a good politician, i.e a boring one who talks about policy and does what he says he’ll do. But Spooner is dissatisfied, feeling the show should be more ‘fun’, so he forcibly takes over as an idiot tyrant, getting more and more tyrannical.

It feels very chaotic in a ‘The Play that Goes Wrong/One Man Two Guvnors’ kind of vibe, and I’m initially concerned that this slapstick-style broad comedy will last the whole 75 minutes. But that concern is overtaken by fear, as Spooner becomes more and more aggressive about audience participation, peaking as he demands everyone repeats after him, “This is a fun show” and so on. He then gets stroppy that not everyone is joining in, and demands that anyone sitting next to someone not joining in puts their hand up. In this way it’s very affecting: I’m suddenly genuinely fearful of my neighbour, and toy with joining in just so I’m not dragged to the front and shamed.

In the second half, the two appear in their underwear, and an overhead voice orders them to perform mime acts in full clown costume while having no communication between each other. The sudden and utter change in tone is initially very affecting: the genuinely beautifully choreographed mime acts combine with Khaled Kurbeh’s ominous soundtrack to create a very compelling and menacing mystery. Who is making the orders? What are they threatening if they’re disobeyed? But much like the excessive chaos in the first act, excessive mystery in the second grows tiring.

As one has come to expect from a Rhum + Clay production, the performances are high energy, high intensity and compelling in themselves. Kurbeh’s accompanying music, a synth-heavy soundscape with use of a small drum kit, is bizarre but fitting. And Blythe Brett’s design is perfectly restrained: Besides a small misbehaving LED sign and a trolly full of props, the only major stage design is a semi-shear curtain which descends after the first act and, with the help of a light shining through, shows a glimpse of the performers’ backstage relationship as well as the sudden changing of pace and atmosphere. It then becomes opaque when the light is shut off. It’s a very simple idea but brilliant. The Pierrot clown costumes in the second half are also a very clever decision: whilst being forced to dress as clowns should seem ridiculous if sinister, Pierrot’s white face paint and loose white clothes lend it an immediate pathos; Spooner and Wells seem tragically trapped.

The problem is not in the execution of the idea, but in the idea itself: it needs a plot. Rhum + Clay have presented us with a rumination rather than a finished thought.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Cesare De Giglio

 


Project Dictator

New Diorama Theatre until 30th April

 

Recently reviewed at this venue:
Moulin Rouge! | ★★★ | Piccadilly Theatre | January 2022
She Seeks Out Wool | ★★★★ | Pleasance Theatre | January 2022
Two Billion Beats | ★★★½ | Orange Tree Theatre | February 2022
The Ballad of Maria Marten | ★★★½ | Wilton’s Music Hall | February 2022

 

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