Playwright debbie tucker green has an aversion to capital letters, perhaps because she wants to foreground her work rather than herself.
What’s for sure is the rawness and urgency of that work. It’s less interested in story than ideas, and this typically angry two-hour piece is no exception.
A dense and at times deliberately alienating vision of race, language and power structures, it’s performed with stunning conviction by a cast of 16 that includes new Doctor Who companion Tosin Cole as a furious activist.
The first of its three parts presents snapshots of lives plagued by racism. It begins with a bemused young man trying to figure out a way of carrying himself that won’t lead to trouble with the police. As he tries various suggestions on his mother, it seems as though he can’t escape judgment. It’s the first of a string of bruising encounters between restless youths and their more watchful elders.
In the second part, reminiscent of David Mamet’s hit play Oleanna, a white male academic (Demetri Goritsas) pedantically instructs a black student (Lashana Lynch) about school shootings and their perpetrators. He insists he’s being open and reasonable, but his patronising manner grows ever more frustrating, and their debate is uncomfortably riveting.
The final section consists of two short films: white Americans read out laws relating to racial segregation, dating from the Jim Crow era, and then white Britons read out the slave codes that applied in Jamaica under British imperial rule.
It’s a gruelling, sobering experience, and that’s intended. Part poem and part lecture, it’s intricately crafted (tucker green directs), and among the many passionate performances those of Kayla Meikle and Eric Kofi Abrefa stand out.
Until November 24 (020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com)
