Nana-Kofi Kufuor’s new two-hander opens with an energising exhibition of verbal dexterity – a pacy delivery of two simultaneous monologues, overlapping, interweaving and intersecting. Gillian describes how uncomfortable and out of place she has been made to feel in the M&S store that both characters are, separately, leaving. A blue light flashes. Jelani d’Aguilar, as Reece, mimes being seized and roughly handled by police officers, his friends having legged it. He’s done nothing wrong, he insists, lippily.
We are confronted with questions that go to the heart of the action. Are these experiences those of any unconfident young woman; or of any teenage boy from an inner-city comprehensive who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or are they the result of racism? Because Gillian and Reece are black, and because no direct comments have been made, it’s impossible to know for sure. This impossibility is an everyday reality for black people in the UK, who also have to deal, daily, with irrational animosity and discrimination, both overt and systemic.
As his face is ground into the gravel, Reece tells the officers that Gillian is his teacher, that she can vouch for him. Gillian walks away. Next day, in school, Reece finds her alone in a classroom, takes her keys, locks the door and accuses her of assimilating.
Kufuor uses Reece’s anger dynamically, to open up an exposition of black experiences of interactions with white people, collective (eg transatlantic slavery) and personal (Gillian’s attack at a nightclub). The subject is vital, but the structuring becomes mechanistic, veering between drama and polemic. Kufuor keeps the action buoyant by mixing humour and emotion in the dialogue, sharply focused in Dermot Daly’s direction and superbly delivered by Misha Duncan-Barry and d’Aguilar. Kufuor’s play (produced by the Red Ladder Theatre Company) is dramatically uneven, but it is also important. Like Azeem Rafiq’s testimony to MPs, last week, it demonstrates that our society needs to pay attention to voices that are too often ignored.
My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored tours until 30 November
