What does solidarity look like? In the opening minutes of Nana-Kofi Kufuor’s new play, the answer seems fairly straightforward. One evening, black teenager Reece (Jelani D’Aguilar) is aggressively stopped and searched by the police. His teacher Gillian (Misha Duncan-Barry), also black, looks on and does nothing. As Reece sees it, she has abandoned and denied her own. But that isn’t quite the full story.
In Red Ladder’s production, the complexities of this situation unfurl during a heated encounter in Gillian’s classroom. Impulsively locking the door, Reece forces a confrontation in which his and Gillian’s different understandings of blackness meet head on. While Reece rails against a structurally racist system, Gillian feels caught between the expectations of black and white spaces, constantly struggling to fit in. And, as a black woman, she has to deal with the intersecting oppressions of racism and sexism.
Written before the latest Black Lives Matter protests but delayed by the pandemic, the subject of Kufuor’s play has become even more pertinent during the wait for its staging. There’s an almost relentless intensity to Dermot Daly’s direction, matching the urgency of the content. The show opens with immediately heart-thumping tension and rarely lets up, save for a few moments of humour. In these brief interludes, D’Aguilar brings a wit and charm to the character of Reece that lightens the otherwise heavy atmosphere.
There are multiple issues and ideas swirling around in Kufuor’s play: racial profiling, misogyny, different lived experiences of what it means to be black, the responsibility of a teacher for their students and where that responsibility ends. It’s a lot to squeeze into 80 minutes – perhaps too much. At times, it feels as though Kufuor is moulding his characters around these talking points, engineering ways for them to continue the debate.
Dramatically, then, My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored is a bit uneven. Its sharp changes in tone and subject don’t always convince and its characters have a habit of sounding like mouthpieces. But it provokes questions that lodge firmly in the mind, continuing to echo after the show ends.
At Leeds Playhouse until 13 November and then touring until 30 November.
