Elmina's Kitchen
Garrick, London WC2
The setting is a West Indian takeaway on Hackney's Murder Mile (the same territory covered by the recent film, Bullet Boy). Here, the regulars sit around and chew the fat. It's fascinating stuff, if occasionally in danger of tipping over into inner-city stereotype. Super-cool Grenadian drug-dealer Digger (a scary Shaun Parkes) taunts the owner, Deli, for being 'Black British' - clearly the lowest of the low.
But with the arrival of Donna Croll's sexually assertive fortysomething, Anastasia, the tone shifts. Deli allows himself to believe life can change: taking a leaf out of one of Anastasia's self-help books he attempts to spruce up not only the restaurant but his relationship with his son. This brings him into conflict with his old friends and his father, and tragedy intervenes.
After a sell-out run at the National in 2003, this new production of Elmina's Kitchen, with writer Kwame Kwei-Armah now in the lead as Deli, has lost none of its force. The first half is too slow and the swaggering machismo can be alienating. But the writing in act two is thrillingly taut. Kwei-Armah gives a performance of real dignity, and there is great interplay between the older male characters - it's lovely to see a modern piece that isn't just obsessed with youth.
Quite rightly much has been made of the fact that both this play and Stratford East's The Big Life have transferred to the West End, proving that there is an audience for black theatre. But I have to say it never even occurred to me that there were no white actors on stage, so gripping is the complexity of characters, who embody all of flawed, chaotic human drama.
