Currently playing at the Arcola Theatre as part of the Africa ‘05 celebrations this is the second time the UK has seen this remarkable performance. Previously staged at Riverside Studios in 1978 to exceptional reviews, it is now restaged by Tiata Fahodzi ( Theatre of the Emancipated ), Britains’ leading African theatre company, under the watchful eye of its’ director Femi Elufowoju, jr.

The story is an old one, the thought of a mother marrying her son and bearing him children is difficult to swallow, as is humorously portrayed by Alaka (Nick Oshiklanlu) in his cries of “pray woman let me eat in peace.” The horror of discovering that the wife you loved is in fact your mother is a burden too horrific to bear, King Odewales frenzied paranoia is an anguish to watch. The suffocating pain of the Queens sobs as she realises the husband she married is in fact her son and her silent, resolute exit from the room heightens the sheer force of the drama enfolding. Even through this most shocking of stories there is humour, in the tradition of Shakespearian tragedies, pathos is found. We laugh at the King and his Yoruba proverbs handed out in copious amounts, for instance “is it not ignorance that makes the rat attack the cat?” Led by Mo Sesay playing King Odewale the cast gave tantalising performances. The intimacy of the Arcola theatre, the still, stifling heat did not detract from the dynamic, energetic performance. The lilting, soul stirring chanting and melodies composed by Akintayo Akinbode evoked the senses and helped transport the audience to another time in a Nigerian place.

All great stories are timeless, as is this one. Rotimi was a master storyteller, cleverly placing the Oedipus Rex tragedy in Nigeria where it easily lends itself to the nuances and intricacies of the plot. Having written the play in the 1960s, Rotimis’ essential message is emphasised in King Odewales’ emphatic reply, “no, don’t blame the Gods,” to his brother, Aderopo (Kwaku Ankomah). It was an allegory to the devastating Nigerian civil war that Rotimi, writing in the 1960s was referring to, but the message is just as potent today: we are masters of our own destinies.

The Gods are not to blame: 8th June - 2nd July 2005 Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola St, E8

Rotozaza’s physical theatre Life Affirming Joyride plays at the Bullion Room. Maureen McManus speaks to Ant Hampton about spontaneous theatre, barriers and power. Life affirming joyride anyone?

Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called,

Life affirming joyride anyone? Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen in a run-down theatre space at the back of the Hackney Empire. Sure, all these bohemian types with their winter underwear seriously in conflict with their hipster jeans know a good place to go.

Taking a chance we followed them to the Bullion Room, out the back of the Hackney Empire for an alternative theatre festival brazenly called Life Affirming Joyride Vol.1. By the time we got there to collect our tickets, the organisers were turning people away. It was the second of the three nights. Had word of mouth gone out, could it be a good sign?

The Bullion Room is an infrequently used space, capacious, and dilapidated, the seats look like rejects from the main theatre, yet the space exudes atmosphere, and is filled with a grungy-chic crowd, talking about acting jobs, and publishing ventures, and wearing the most impossible combinations. Combinations that is in the underwear sense, one couldn’t help noticing, as winter underwear and tights fought for attention under low-cut jeans. And the theme continued on stage where underwear featured in three of the five shows.

Rotozaza is a daring physical/alternative theatre company, whose co-creator Ant Hampton is the festival’s organiser. His partner is Silvia Mercuriali who acts in this and the forthcoming work. Their show called Getting out of Calais, 3am or A makes B wet while C watches blurs the boundaries between rehearsed and improvised theatre. Dressed only in underwear, throwing water over each other, the three actors played with the audience’s sympathies. Hampton said, “That’s what we are trying to do, so that you are constantly having to guess in one moment you think it’s rehearsed and the next you think it’s spontaneous.”

The rest of the show, which was made up of five acts in total was equally inventive. The Highs and Lows of Owning Your Own Home showcased three older actors (John Ringham, Godfrey Jackman and Patrick Driver) having a lot of fun with the writing of Glen Neath. This was the first part of a new play, which made me want to see more. And then underwear again in The Superheroes, a marvellous tale of domestic anxiety, farcically unleashed by actors Peter Arnold and Greg McLaren.

The Riot group opened the second part with Whitewashed, New England, 1675, where the use of a commentator with a microphone experimented with the notion of witnessing disaster. The humour and physicality of the evening climaxed in a fabulous piece called, Naïve Dance Masterclass by Matt Rudkin. This self-parodying theatrical treat, with the added fun of a fantastic hula-dancing doll left the audience elevated.

It really had been what it claimed, a joyride.
Afterwards I talked to Ant Hampton, eager to find out more about Rotozaza’s new show, Five in the Morning, which will soon begin a three-week run at the Bullion Room.

Tell me about the idea behind Rotozaza?
It comes on the back of three and a half years work on a particular way of making theatre, which started with Bloke. I thought if I gave an unrehearsed actor a list of instructions that you get him to agree to follow, in advance, the performer doesn’t know anything about the show but as long as they do what they are told everything will go to plan.

Why?
What’s fascinating is to see on stage a thing that develops in front of your eyes. The actor is discovering everything the same time as you. It absolutely depends for its existence on aliveness.
The performer is an audience member the same time as being an actor - breaking down that barrier?

Rather than barriers, often I see it in terms of power, I feel a lot of theatre dominates the audience, and the audience want to be dominated, whereas this sets up an equal relationship where the sympathy is high with the person on stage because they know the situation is like this.

Describe one of your shows?
ROMCOM is played with guest performers, they don’t need to be actors. We give them headphones, where they repeat the text they hear. One voice for action and a voice for movement. The text is written by Glen Neath. I wrote the actions, strategy, sound and lights. For ROMCOM we have a video with the lights and the sound and music for the show and the two ipods for the performances so we start them all together, then we sit down and watch it.

Tell me about the new show you are directing?
Five in the Morning has three people (actors, Greg McLaren, Silvia Mercuriali and Melanie Wilson) in swimming costumes, in this strange aquaworld. There are voices telling them what to do that everyone hears - the audience as well - and the quality is as if they just walked on stage and they’ve agreed to do what they’re told to do, but there’s a very mysterious feel to it, you’re constantly wondering are they rehearsed or not. The action flicks from there to very complete, very random, intensely worked theatrical images.

For example?
For example a Chinese vendor in the street illegally selling little radio controlled cars, being watched by the pope and a bunch of bodyguards in the background and he turns into an acrobat figure performing for the pope. By flicking the scenes from one to the other we try and identify two completely different ways of reading a show and particularly what happens to an audience when you are flicking between them. So the pool is where your presence in the room is very important and you have to ask yourself what you are doing watching. Within that there’s the fact that you are wondering whether or not they’re rehearsed. In a lot of our work a sort of parallel metaphor starts rising to the surface, the part of ourselves that is rehearsed and the part that is spontaneous. Are we not actually in some way completely pre-recorded? Is what we do and say really that spontaneous or not?

It’s strange how it works?
The fact that the actors are going through the same thing with the audience means these darker scenes stand as a sort of escape from this exhausting predicament.
Rotozaza worked a lot abroad, how are you finding London?
ROMCOM has had a lot of success internationally and from that we managed to set up contact for the other shows. We do different language shows, for example in Portuguese and Italian. Because of the strategies involved we can just translate and re-record. We are doing ROMCOM in Argentina at the end of March.

Why the Bullion Room?
In the hope that it might become a proper home for east London’s alternative theatre makers. It’s pretty embarrassing to have a situation in London that there is only one house for that kind of work - the BAC.

Five in the Morning will run at the Bullion Room behind the Hackney Empire from February 23 to March 12.
Hackney Empire Bullion Room Theatre
Wilton Way
London, E8 1BH
www.hackneyempire.co.uk
www.rotozaza.co.uk

The Sugar Wife is a play set in Dublin’s Quaker community of 1840. Written by Elizabeth Kuti, an English-Hungarian writer who moved to Dublin in 1993. Maureen McManus interviewed the playwright to explore the process by which the play was written.

The Sugar Wife tells the story of four characters, the main one being Hannah Tewkley, the wife of a sugar and tea merchant in Dublin. As Quakers (a religion of non-violence) she and her husband Samuel welcome into their home, Alfred Darby, a philanthropist, and Sarah Worth, a former slave, who now gives lecture tours. The play deals with the efforts the characters made to live in a world that demands compromise to survive.

How did the play come about?
I was interested in taking the Quakers as a community to write about, a slightly different take on Irish history. I was also interested in ideas about slavery… because the tea and coffee business was very much connected with sugar, which was a slave produce and I thought there might be something interesting to explore there. The idea of a couple who were wealthy and acquiring wealth, who were very high-minded but somehow also compromised by the trade they were involved in. I thought that it might connect with the Celtic Tiger and the huge change in the racial make-up of Dublin where this is a totally new thing in Irish culture, suddenly there is a lot more cultural diversity.

What about the female characters?
I was interested in the idea of someone losing their faith and it was also about someone awakening in many ways -awakening to a recognition that things aren’t black and white - there is a more complex interplay between good and evil forces, and that reflects on Hannah’s own sexuality as well.
Sarah Worth (the former slave) tells the story of her ancestors and what happens on the slave ship (when half the slaves were thrown overboard and murdered) based on the true case of an infamous ship called the Zong, which was instrumental in bringing about the abolition of slavery because people were so horrified by the story, and that real atrocity. The style of the telling is fictionalised.
The issues in the Sugar Wife seem to be coming from a place of Post-colonial anxiety?

Post-colonial anxiety is something that one feels quite acutely as an English person living in Dublin. Of course, you’re feeling a level of guilt or pain about an imperial past, the wrongs of history. You can’t be an English person living in Ireland for that amount of time without thinking about those issues. It might be why I was attracted to writing about this Quaker community, because they are a people who left England to try to escape persecution. It was easier for me to take that perspective, as an outsider than for an Irish person living in Ireland, a feeling of being an outsider from the mainstream culture.

Soho Theatre and Writers’ Centre
21 Dean Street
London, W1D 3NE
www.sohotheatre.com

If you are looking for the hottest ticket in town, the sold-out play of the year, albeit in a very small theatre (the King’s Head in Islington), or a vicious, no-nonsense send-up of Britain’s modern-day ruling class, Who’s The Daddy? is on its way to be proclaimed as the most controversial new play of the year.

The play has had the King’s Head Theatre full for its entire run and a move to a west-end venue is in the pipeline. Taking its leaf out of TV, the play seemed to have been able to re-invent itself and do what TV used to do best: the political satire.

Cue Who’s The Daddy?, a fictional recreation of the events that took place at the sometimes called ‘The Sextator’ (real name, The Spectator, Boris Johnson editor) the most talked-about magazine of the decade as one scandal after another lit up the tabloid front pages, starting with Rod Liddle’s affair with the magazine’s 23-year-old receptionist and culminating with the resignation of Home Secretary supremo, David Blunkett. Also involving Petronella Wyatt, Rod Liddle, Kimberly Quinn and MP for Henley-on-Thames extraordinaire, Boris Johnson.

I have to confess that I can’t wait for Will Smith to walk into my office to study all my moves for his subsequent blockbuster about your very own CEN Mag. Sadly, there will not be any sleazy details written about me or the magazine, as yours truly, has no known - hum - vices.

But who knows, as you get older, with money and intellect showering your face, your values might change. And, that is exactly what the play is about: class and shifting values. From Shakespeare, to Wilde, to Lenny Henry, the class struggle always got the laugh and in the 21st century, guess what? It still does.

It took some doing, or rather methodology. Follow me:

Act 1
The finest team of writers in town, at the moment anyway, was assembled. A team of sharp pens made of theatre critics of ‘The Spectator’, Toby Young and Lloyd Evans, with additional material provided by Jeremy Lloyd, the co-creator of Are You Being Served? and ‘Allo ‘Allo…, the pinnacle of street & TV credibility, I agree with you.

Act 2
The next move was to base their bedroom farce loosely on real events and make sure that scantily-clad women and trouserless men dash in and out of cupboards. Some like Boris Johnson might even say that their rendition of the events is an “inverted pyramid of piffle”, but this is another debate and as often in those cases, reality supersedes fiction.

Act 3
Put together a serious cast of solid actors- Tim Hudson (Boris Johnson), Sara Crowe (Petronella Wyatt), Saul Reichlin (Michael Howard), Paul Prescott (David Blunkett), with a penchant for comedy, but not too much as ex-eastender Michelle Ryan (Tiffany the mole) is brought in as the male(s) interest.

Act 4
Hire director Tamara Harvey (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest), producer Ian Osborne (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) and Nica Burns (Some Girls) in the hope that the tiny King’s Head will sustain the assault of a crowd shredded to pieces by their own laughter. You get me?

As a conclusion, we will all agree that if sex is still a short-cut to rise above your station, a good laugh is still the best way for a producer to laugh all the way to the bank. Show Me The Money, sorry Who’s the Daddy at a bigger theatre near you, soon.

For further information on the play, please browse www.whosthedaddyplay.com
Nica Burns and Ian Osborne present

WHO’S THE DADDY?
By Toby Young and Lloyd Evans
with additional material
by Jeremy Lloyd
Hair and Wigs Designer
Richard Mawbey
Composer and Sound Designer
Matt Clifford
Lighting Designer
Chris Davey
Designer
Christopher Woods
Director
Tamara Harvey

Cast
Paul Prescott, Saul Reichun, Michelle Ryan, Caludia Shear, Sara Crowe, Jot Davies, Peter Hamilton Dyer

King’s Head Theatre
115 Upper Street
Islington, N1

Tuesday - Saturday 8pm
Saturday 3.00pm and Sunday 3.30pm
Box Office 020 7226 1916

William Shakespeare’s short, savage tragedy about a military hero who is spurred on by his ambitious wife and dangerously fascinated with witchcraft is staged at the Arcola Theatre this September by Out of Joint Productions.

The action unfolds in an African state torn apart by war, and includes promenade elements. Director, Max Stafford-Clark says of his decision to stage the play in this way, “it’s possible to watch, say, King Lear, see Gloucester’s eyes cut out and then go to the bar, order a gin and tonic and say ‘how moving, how very affecting,’ but you’re not necessarily involved. A promenade or site-specific production dislocates the usual relationship between actors and audience and moves both parties out of the comfort zone.”

It may be this push to “move both parties out of the comfort zone” that has resulted in Max’s Macbeth being presented within mills, factories, backstage areas, fringe theatres and earlier this year at Wilton’s Music Hall in London’s East End.

2004 saw the tenth year anniversary of this production of Macbeth and it returns again to give a much anticipated 11th year. This had been a sell-out at every venue in 2004 and received wide critical acclaim including The Times which said, “director Max Stafford-Clark brilliantly has reimagined Shakespeare’s Scottish tale of murder and magic in modern Africa, without sacrificing textual complexity or resorting to cheap gimmickry.”

Danny Sapani returns in the title role and is joined by most members of the original cast; Lady Macbeth is played by Raquel Cassidy of Channel 4’s Teachers fame and Patrick Robinson, recently seen in Festen at the Almeida plays Banquo.

Macbeth can be seen at the Arcola Theatre from 1-10 September.
Arcola Theatre
27 Arcola Street
London E8
www.arcolatheatre.com
020 7503 1646

The Royal National Theatre eagerly and protectively awaits the title and production of Mike Leigh’s new play, as do we, excited by the mystery and fascination of it all. Will it cause a tempest, flooding the South Bank venue with honour or derision?

“I want you to get an interview with Mike Leigh!” The assertion in my editor’s voice told me he wasn’t kidding. I should have realised then that I was in for a rough write, but buoyed by the confidence suddenly bestowed upon me, I naively skipped out of the office, only to be met head on by lightning, thunder and an unholy summer afternoon deluge that instantly killed the spring in my step, reducing not only my soddened sneakers but my enthusiasm for this assignment into an amorphous squelching mass.

After floating down Brick Lane I washed up inside the entrance of a dimly lit bohemian café and slumping onto an overripe leather sofa, not keen to be used as a nappy, I slurped through a strong, bitter cappuccino, murdered some lung cells with a crude roll-up, assessed my thoughts and when my lights finally switched themselves back on, I’d found I’d come up against a brick wall, and a damp one at that. I don’t think being in Brick Lane had any coincidence or connection.

To what extent the sobering rain, coffee and properties of smoked tobacco leaf, helped kick-start the luminous realisation that I hadn’t a chance in HELL of getting an interview with Mike Leigh, based on what knowledge I possessed of this British auteur, I’ll never know.

But I certainly know now. “He doesn’t do interviews and has told us, even, to respect his working methods during this period. In fact, he’s not even working in any of our rehearsal spaces…etc etc,” informed one of the marketing staff at the Royal National Theatre on London’s Southbank, where Leigh will, on the 15th September, present his dramatic piece, a full length play, something he hasn’t done in more than a decade. The natural process is to request a ‘press pack’ but I didn’t feel there was any point. The piece is currently billed as A New Play (working title only) by Mike Leigh, for the Cottesloe stage.

Leigh was once quoted as saying, “As long as I’m making movies I’m very happy to have nothing to do with the theatre. I find it boring and sterile.” What has revived his interest, I wonder. Intrigue arises then for anyone who is familiar with the clandestine modus operandi of this seemingly quiet and demur man, whose award winning films usually bellow with refreshing depth and imagination that belies his seniority of 62 years; films such as Secrets and Lies, Naked and most recently Vera Drake.

Born in Salford, Lancashire in 1943, Leigh was a doctors’ son of Russian origin, whose grandfather, a miniaturist painter had the name, Lieberman who then changed it to Leigh when he emigrated in 1902. The 40’s and 50’s saw Leigh’s interest develop on a diet of Hollywood and British films, then later the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (for acting studies), served his purposes, as well as the Camberwell School of Art, London International School of Film Technique, the Central School of Art and Design and experimental theatre for the BBC in 1970.

We know that the characters of his play will be well rounded, with the creation of an atmosphere that really does exist, with everything to know about the characters and their lives, the key factor to this being extensive research and improvisation.

One can only imagine the rehearsal process Leigh is subjecting his actors to at the moment. The devising of a theatrical piece, any actor will tell you, is demanding, self-sacrificing and soul stripping. Here it could both be a blessing and a curse in the hands of a great director, some say the greatest living British director, and the third greatest of all time after Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell.

The pressure must be inconceivable even for Leigh himself who has to find the strength to establish trusting relationships with each individual cast member, then intuition and navigational dexterity to guide them as a newly formed family back to shore from a monstrous sea of words and ideas laden with the sumptuous treasure of a story to tell. The cast are: John Burgess, Ben Caplan, Allan Corduner, Adam Godley, Caroline Gruber, Nitzan Sharron, Samantha Spiro, Alexis Zegerman

Past treasures include Abigail’s Party, a slice of 70’s suburban boredom, also made for TV starring Alison Steadman. Other plays include A Great Big Shame, Greek Tragedy, Smelling A Rat, Goose Pimples, Stacy, Silent Majority, Babies Grow Old and Bleak Moments. The Royal National Theatre eagerly and protectively awaits the title and production of Mike Leigh’s new play, as do we, excited by the mystery and fascination of it all. Will it cause a tempest, flooding the South Bank venue with honour or derision? Either way, more rain is coming.

And if my story seems to have an aqueous resonance to it, maybe I’m still waterlogged from the elemental deluge I encountered, but if Leigh’s work is anything to go by we are in for a treat like a good fresh bitter cappuccino, something to stir the senses and light up our conscience.

The Play runs at the Cottesloe Theatre until 31st January 2006.

This is the first time ever that the London Eye has been used for a live arts festival and was sold out well in advance of its opening. It seems an African summer breeze has blown in over the UK, with weather temperatures soaring, bringing with it a feast of unforgettable experiences.

How ironic then that, as we gorge on a culinary assortment of creative drama, music and art for AFRICA 05 this year, we are reminded that the Gleneagles G8 political summit in July in Scotland is set to highlight pressing topics of man-made proportions such as poverty and trade justice issues, especially on the African continent.

In the back of our minds we are all wondering what our politicians will do to bring about improvement in these stricken areas.

For the moment celebrity power seems to have the edge and is welcomed as events such as the LIVE 8 concerts and the extraordinary one day mini festival FLIGHT 5065, just taken place on the London Eye, bring about the awareness of unnecessary hardships through the expression of diverse influential art forms.

Created by Cafédirect, a fair-trade organisation set up by charities to directly benefit coffee, tea and cocoa farmers and their communities, Flight 5065 hoped, on our summer’s solstice, to raise the profile of fair trade issues and bring them towards the mainstream as part of the Make Poverty History campaign. It was also designed to celebrate Africa in the fortnight immediately before the crucial G8 summit.

This is the first time ever that the London Eye has been used for a live arts festival and was sold out well in advance of it’s opening. 2000 ticket holders swarmed into the 32 capsules on the revolving monolithic wheel over a three half hour cycle period, to be entertained by over 135 artists performing specially commissioned pieces of drama, music and comedy whilst soaring over the London skyline.

Theatre highlights included contributions from the National and Royal Court Theatres; the latter producing up to 27 one-minute plays, from leading dramatists such as Roy Williams, Joe Penhall, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson and Tanika Gupta.

The world of music was represented by Blur’s Damon Albarn who’ll be curating new African music with his Honest Jon label, as well as Beth Orton, Turin Brakes and hip-hop artist, Jonzi D; while Arthur Smith and new political comics Andy Zaltsman and John Oliver added their own inimitable style of humour.

British celebrities Colin Macfarlane, Junior Simpson, Jo Brand, Jonzi D and established companies The National and Royal Court Theatres including a host of African talent with artists representing Ghana, Nigeria, Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone took off on Flight 5065 to a rapturous response. Segun Lee-French, a Manchester based writer and performance poet, once given the challenge, wrote a 25-minute satirical critique based on colonial reversal. What if Africa had colonised England? A witty and thought-provoking offering of alternative perception and dimension was the result.

Called Ayo and Ade’s Big London Safari, it charts the moment when Ayo, the new Governor of London comes from Nigeria and is escorted on one of the ‘safest’ safari rides in the capital of Blankland by an influential business official, Ade.

Hoping to edify and impress his governor for the purpose of securing lucrative business deals, Ade takes Ayo, who as a child had always dreamt of seeing Blankland, aboard the London Eye to show him the extent of his new governance.

Naïve in his ideals, Ayo hopes to empower the ‘natives’ of this land with a bit more self-sufficiency, until an encounter in the capsule with a Blanklander renegade, Fred, a ‘disobedient breed’ of savage, refuses to be treated as a ‘colourful’ subservient when Ayo attempts to take his picture for the album. This sparks a conflict of interest between Ayo and Ade after Ade unexpectedly recognises Fred as his fugitive and fraudulent ex-office clerk and wants immediate recompense. The affect of this volatile exchange makes Ayo see that his reforms will not be ideally realised if he is to maintain any sense of supremacy over this particular colony.

A tightly delivered and highly professional musical offering. Set in the British black community, musical production The Big Life is one of two well-received plays running in the West End.

The Big Life was created at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, from where it transferred to its current home at the Apollo Theatre, having had two full runs in Stratford and having been four and a half years in development.

The story centres on the ‘Windrush experience’ of West Indian immigrants arriving in the mother country and begins with the docking of the Windrush ship, when we are introduced to an appealing cast of carpenters, musicians and hopeful university lecturers, each full of aspirations and optimism about their respective futures and fortunes.

However, within a short time, we also witness the rapid decline of this initial euphoria, into disillusionment and despondency, as the harsh weather and the cruel realities of betrayed optimism, racism, rejection and homelessness confront the characters.

The plot is not a complex one and comprises the stitching together of these and other emigrant experiences, underpinned by themes of disappointment and rejection, all of which are ably and successfully executed by a cast of twelve. Although individual characters are not developed to any real extent, this does not interfere with the universality of the themes discussed.

Despite the importance of some of the darker themes explored, the theatrical experience is not a bleak one. Much to the enjoyment of the partly black audience, the tone was, for the most part, light-hearted with many enjoyable comic moments and therefore many opportunities for the audience to enjoy a hearty laugh.

Often the many comedy moments sprang from the portrayal of the frequently stereotyped optimistic West Indian approach to life, reinforced, in this instance, by song and dance interludes, and in particular, the readiness of West Indians to see the humour in adversity and to make light of difficult situations. This particular comedic theme is given further prominence by the theatrical device of Mrs. Aphrodite, a middle-aged Jamaican woman, who provides a hilarious commentary from one of the boxes, observing the characters’ progress and giving us the benefit of her own perspective on how some of the West Indian experiences played out on stage, have since been translated into contemporary life.

Pleasingly, the black community was well represented in the audience, a sight which is not as common as it might be in the West End.

The story of the ‘Windrush experience’ is a significant one in the context of the history of London itself and of a community which forms an important constituent part of many cities in today’s Britain. These are communities which have played, and which continue to play, a determining role in the shaping of popular culture. It is therefore important that second generation West Indians and indigenous white Londoners alike, appreciate the many adversities of the historical emigrant experience and that they do not take for granted what their predecessors endured for the sake of some of the freedoms which would be expected today.

Given that the author, Philip Headley has chosen the vehicle of a musical rather than a novel, to give creative form to his ideas, the emigrant situation portrayed in The Big Life, is more the Sam Selvon of Lonely Londoners than that of V.S. Naipaul’s, Ralph Singh of The Mimic Men. Nevertheless, The Big Life is a tightly delivered and highly professional offering which makes for a thoroughly enjoyable night out.

The Big Life continues its run until November.

Cast includes: Geoff Aymer, Claudia Cadette, Tameka Empson, Amanda Horlock, Antonia Kemi Coker, Jason Pennycooke, Marcus Powell, Neil Reidman, Yvette Rochester Duncan, Victor Romero Evans, Chris Tummings and Yaa.
Music by: Paul Joseph; Lyrics by: Paul Sirett; Book by: Paul Sirett; Director: Clint Dyer