Less is always more in the plays of Caryl Churchill. Lasting for under 15 minutes, this spare, punchy play considers the attitudes that lead Uganda to pass the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014, which allowed the death penalty (later amended to life imprisonment) for those found guilty of homosexual activity. Acknowledging its debt to Stephen O Murray and Will Roscoe’s sociology book Boy-Wives and Female Husbands, the play considers how rhetoric and language shape thinking around homosexuality. “Somebody says,” is a constant refrain.
Sometimes the somebody is President Mugabe, asking: “If dogs and pigs don’t do it, why must human beings?” Sometimes it’s an American evangelist, who claims: “We’re losing America. We’re winning in Africa.” Or it might be a local in Burkina Faso who knows that “Gender is not the same as anatomy”. And the fluidity of gender is reflected in a piece in which statements curl around each other like smoke, and in Dominic Cooke’s production in which Fisayo Akinade, Sharon D Clarke and Alex Hassell almost dance around each other, delivering the text with a compelling rhythmic beat.
Despite an American rap group claiming there is no word in any African language to describe homosexuality, it seems there are many. They fall off the actors’ tongues like poetry. It’s not a finger-wagging piece but an angry and sorrowful one, acknowledging the role of colonialism and Christianity in bringing homophobia to Africa and accepting that, while words are never enough, speaking up and out is crucial whenever lies are presented as indisputable truths.
•At the Royal Court theatre, London, to 30 July. Box office: 020-7565 5000.
