Phakama: Be Yourself **** Tricycle Theatre
If I tell you that one of the most moving, exuberant and visually stunning shows seen in London is a youth production devised and performed by a group of South African and London teenagers, you will probably be sceptical.
But Be Yourself really is terrific, the kind of evening that ends with you finding yourself joining a conga winding through and out of the theatre. It embraces Stephen Lawrence, and makes connections between the experience of 18-year-olds in South Africa and their counterparts in London. It is like one of the airline maps in which you see lines interconnecting all across the world.
It is also most specifically about the city. Our city. To begin with it looks like a village, with miniature tin foil covered buildings. Suddenly you realise that all the landmarks are there: Canary Wharf winking at you blindly. Then you realise you are seeing the city as if for the first time, through a stranger's eyes, fresh and new-minted, and woven into it the rivers of South Africa as well as the cockney chimes of Maybe it's Because I'm a Londoner: it gives an outsider's and an insider's view of London.
If the content is interesting and sometimes slippery, so too is the form of the piece. At one point, after the cast have given their individual responses to the murder of Stephen Lawrence, they come round with bowls of water and offer to wash the audience's hands. The washing away of guilt? Or a kind of atonement? Pontius Pilot or Mary Magdalene?
The production uses the full height of the auditorium and repeatedly takes the show into the audience: you feel as though you have been thrust into the very heart of the city, into its smells, sounds and sights.
It is an exhilarating and truly remarkable achievement.
