What makes theatre? Words, of course, but sometimes plays are wordless. Stages are involved, until they’re not. Visuals, lighting, costume – all optional. Nouveau Riché’s Queens of Sheba is stripped to bare bones and is all the better for it.
On a plain black stage, four excellent performers speak about what it means to be black British women. They do this without much of a traditional, linear story, with Jessica L Hagan’s original writing adapted for the stage by Ryan Calais Cameron. The poetry and circularity of Hagan’s words are often strong, with memorable refrains echoing through the piece.
During one section, the performers compare what it means to be a black woman who loves hip-hop to being “in love with your oppressor”. In another, based on an incident in London’s West End, they are rejected from a nightclub for being “too black”. The only music we hear is what the performers sing beautifully themselves – and they sing often. The emotion from these musical interludes, where we hear a cappella versions of songs made famous by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner, carries the piece. As does Jessica Kaliisa’s slick direction, and Yassmin V Foster’s excellent movement direction, that feels both stylised and very real.
For some black women, Queens of Sheba might appear to cover ground that feels a little stale; the fetishisation of our bodies by white men, or the ways the black men in our own communities can fail us. Surely there is more to us than how men treat us? There is also everything Queens of Sheba doesn’t cover – queer black female stories, black motherhood stories, black female stories that aren’t able-bodied or young. But the burden of representation is an unfair one. So few black female voices are given space on British stages, let alone at the Edinburgh fringe, and one piece of theatre cannot speak for the entirety of black British womanhood.
Queens of Sheba might speak a lot about the pains of black women, but it also provides both joy and entertainment without pandering to its audience (of any race or gender). This show gives an insight to the black female experience, but is fundamentally about speaking one’s own truth.
- At the Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, until 26 August. Then at the New Diorama theatre, London, 4-8 September.
- Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
