As we know from One Night in Miami and Girl from the North Country, Arinzé Kene is a powerfully charismatic actor. While he is always a pleasure to watch, he relies a bit too heavily on his personal magnetism in this piece, which he created and which is described as a mix of “gig theatre, spoken word, live art and direct address”. It wrestles with the dilemmas confronting the artist in today’s world.
Kene comes before us in many guises. For much of the evening he is a character called Virus who gets into fights on London buses, is razzed by the law, thrown out by his mum, briefly consoled by a girl called Jade. But Kene finds himself assailed by friends, relatives and industry figures, often in voiceovers, for perpetuating the idea of the “generic angry young black man” and for taking us on a tour of the urban jungle. In retaliation, Kene changes tack and shows that the real Virus in London life is not the rootless black loner but all those who are changing the character of the city by driving out small businesses, pursuing aggressive gentrification and creating a wall-to-wall cafe culture.
Kene’s form of performance poetry is at its most vivid in his vision of modern London with its loft extensions, pavement traffic jams and yummy mummies creating “pramageddon”. Kene also makes good use of two on-stage musicians, Shiloh Coke and Adrian McLeod, and of bizarre images – at one point, he finds himself imprisoned in a gigantic balloon, which seems to symbolise the constraints others would impose on him.
Behind the piece lies a big question: whether the artist is a free agent or is defined by the identity politics of our era. As Branden Jacobs-Jenkins did in An Octoroon, Kene seeks to subvert imprisoning labels but, where that play had a strong narrative spine, this solo show seems discursive and loose-knit. Kene has a poetic gift and a powerful presence, but here his arguments about the role of the artist and his satiric vision of modern London are often submerged by his own postmodern playfulness.
• At the Bush theatre, London, until 21 April. Box office: 020-8743 5050.
