Do not underestimate the gravity of the medical complaint on which this play pivots. Mrs (Debra Michaels) has never had an orgasm and would like to experience it now, in her middle years. Her GP makes the mistake of dismissing it, reminding her that she is in menopause and packing her off for a dementia test.
But this quest for the most elusive thing in her life is not whimsy, nor the middle-class sexual bohemianism of Miranda July’s novel All Fours, although Mojisola Adebayo’s script might be considered an offshoot of “hot-flush noir” but with radical edges around sexuality, gender, class and race.
The journey here relates to abuse, trauma, misogyny, Christian evangelism and mixed heritage relationships in what appears to be a near-future world, which looks much like our own, and is intent on reducing the pleasure and freedom of women and girls of colour.
The analogy to space travel gives the story its levity: Brexit is in the past; Spexit (a government programme that relocates immigrants to space and is odiously reminiscent of the Rwanda scheme) is the present. Afrofuturist elements come in beautiful black and white animations (by Candice Purwin) projected on a back screen, which deal with difficult subject matter in a beguiling and naive way. Miriam Nabarro’s set features the home of Mrs and hangs at a tilt, with luminous edges, as if its own lonely planet. Musical interludes bring foot-tapping beats (by Sun Ra, Queen, Jamila Woods and others) but also stop the story short, plucking us out of the dark depths of the drama.
A Tamasha co-production first performed in 2023, it is directed by Gail Babb and delivered in a prevailingly bright tone. Michaels navigates the shifts between light and dark well, sometimes speaking in rhyme. Slowly, her character tells us of a past marked by teenage sexual assault and a passionless marriage to a man whose death leaves her finally free to explore her queerness.
Mrs’s son, a DJ (Bradley Charles), plays records in a booth on the side of the stage and occasionally chips in but this is essentially a monologue in which she tells us her story and animates various others: a friendship with a young girl who has undergone FGM, and the medical prejudice faced by an intersex friend. In between, there is African mythology and folklore which is beautifully illustrated on the screen but brief and not entirely tied together.
Mrs’s interstellar voyage into untrammelled new territory is a quest for joy and healing too; she finds lift-off in a wonderful, tear-inducing ending.
At Brixton House, London, until 28 June
