Bola Agbaje has written a number of very good plays – Gone Too Far!, Off the Endz, Belong – about different aspects of cultural identity. She has now come up with a new piece for the National Youth Theatre about two female pals – black Funke and white Cleo – who dedicate their energies to a music-and-chat vlog (video blog), but who, off camera, reveal their deep divisions. It’s a punchy play that explores the perils of new media and the problems of interracial friendship.
Under the nom de plume Sons of Bitches, Funke and Cleo exuberantly role-play to the camera. They spend a lot of time, however, pressing the pause button to reveal their private tensions. Funke delights in her body while Cleo shrinks from the word “vagina” and nervously refers to “downstairs”. Where Funke is angered by American police brutality towards people of colour, Cleo remains parochially indifferent. Cleo is wounded by the insults she receives on Twitter, but Funke claims that, as a young black woman, she is routinely trolled. Agbaje records all this with candour and honesty but, in reversing the usual situation where a black character is seen as secondary, she makes Funke exceptionally mature and Cleo unduly naive.
Tara Tijani as Funke and Katherine Humphrey as Cleo play the two characters with vivacity in Valentina Ceschi’s production, and persuade one that their friendship rests on a shared delight in performance. But, in exposing the potential dangers of a faith in new technology and the transcendent power of video, Agbaje makes a shrewd point that absolves her from the charge of vlogging a dead horse.
- At Finborough theatre, London, until 20 August. Box office: 0844-847 1652.
