Peter Viney's Blog

The Barber Shop Chronicles
by Inua Ellems

National Theatre, Fuel, Leeds Playhouse & Roundhouse co-production

Directed by Bijan Sheibani
Designed by Rae Smith
Choreography by Aline David

The Roundhouse, Camden, London
Friday 16th August 2019, 20.00

CAST:

Anthony Ofoegbu – Emmanuel
Mohammed Mansaray – Samuel
Maynard Eziashi – Musa / Andile / Mensah
Adé Dee Haastrup – Wole / Kwabena / Simon
Emmanuel Ighodaro – Tokunbo / Paul / Simphiwe
Demmy Ladipo – Wallace / Timothy / Mohammed / Tinashe
David Webber – Abram / Ohee / Sizwe
Micah Balfour – Winston / Shoni
Okorie Chukwu – Elnathan / Benjamin / Dwain
Tom Moutchi – Kwame / Fabrice / Brian / Olawale
Elmi Rashid Elmi – Ethan
Eric Shango – Tanaka / Fitfi

For this performance Elsinder Moore will be covering movement.

This is a revival of the acclaimed National Theatre production from 2017. We usually plan theatre months ahead as one has to, but this was last minute. We had promised to take our 15 year old granddaughter to London, and she wanted to see the Camden markets, and we were staying over, so it seemed a natural end to the day. We had regretted missing it at the National Theatre.

Before the show … pre show

Chalk Farm used to be very familiar territory. In 1970, there were Sunday concerts at the Roundhouse, with several bands in a circle. There were several stages, and the audiences moved round to the band to eliminate setting-up time. With friends playing there, we spent much time in Marine Ices between sets, which was full of musicians. Then in the late 70s and early 80s we used to record in a spoken voice studio at Chalk Farm and always had lunch there. In the late 80s we used to stay nearby and browse the bookshops, and take our kids there to eat. It had the first pizza and pasta in London as well as the famed ice cream. It’s closed and now just an ice-cream shop further up the road. We last ate there in 2013 before Robert LePage’s Playing Cards 1: Spades at the Roundhouse. I’d been looking forward to repeating the experience.

Anyway, back to the Barber Shop Chronicles. I seem obsessive in finding sitcom links to plays recently, but my first thought was Desmonds the successful Channel 4 sitcom series about a barber from Guyana in Peckham … which is just where this play starts, and comes back to, between detours and ends. In between, it goes to Lagos, Accra, Harare, Kampala AND Johannesburg in just the one day.

Pre show African dance with audience

There is a major audience participation pre-show, with people invited to the barbers’ chairs, culminating in a mass dance with many from the audience dancing, and they all knew the moves too. The audience was at least 50% ‘black’ whether African or Afro-Caribbean. Anthony Ofoegbu, who we saw several times at the RSC in the Rome season, came round speaking and shaking hands before the show. His is the lead role.

African accents were a problem for us. It took a while to adjust, and I wondered whether there was a differentiation between various African accents that was funny for the African audience members as it went from Ghana to Zimbabwe. Sub-Saharan African accents in English have a broad similarity to my ears, yet they come from not just different languages, but whole totally different language groups. There is no connecting linguistic line from Nigeria to South Africa. To a non-European, French, Italian and Spanish all are closely related, yet have such very different accents in English. It’s equally true of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Very clear differences. I can hear Jamaica versus the other Caribbean islands clearly too. Maybe I just don’t hear the African subtleties, but to my ear it was just ‘African English.’

The Lagos, Nigeria segment

There were many lines which had the audience in hysterics that sailed clean over my head. Afterwards I cited cultural references that I had failed to get, but our 15 year old said she got many that we didn’t and they were generational rather than cultural and several were recent and music related. Maybe.   I did hear Boris Johnson referenced but not as what.

‘Bad Boy’ (Demmy Lapido) had the audience rolling in the aisles on the differences between white women and black women, and on white women paying for drinks. I had no mechanical comprehension problems, I could hear well  (the cast were all mic’d) and had adjusted to the accent, but I didn’t know what was so funny. Some I got. ‘Time cannot constrain us. We are Africans’ (i.e. we will be very late) crosses to French Speaking Africans, and I taught many. Of course, a white playwright daren’t have made such stereotypical comments, and almost certainly couldn’t get a play with an all-male cast of twelve produced in London 2019. That’s a shame, because a lot was about men, specifically father relations in matrilineal societies.

They had a section on the nigger / nigga debate … a few years ago, a DJ was sacked for playing an ancient record with ‘nigger’ in it. Then other DJs asked how they could play rap records and were given the absurd BBC ruling that ‘nigga / niggah’ was allowed but ‘nigger’ wasn’t. A difficult distinction in an aural medium. The South African character in the play used to charge money to let white people call him ‘kaffir.’

We recalled attending a play in Istanbul directed by our friend, Taner Barlas, in the 70s. It was about people in Eastern Turkey, living in poverty, resisting the dastardly government tax collectors. I have rarely seen an audience so involved and committed, though we did not understand a word, but enjoyed it hugely. It was a bit like that tonight.  Other reviews use the word ‘joyous’ and it fits.

Anthony Ofoegbu as Emmanuel

The cast list shows the various names of characters, but only two stuck, Emmanuel and Samuel. Anthony Ofoegbu was “man of the match” with his portrayal of Peckham barber Emmanuel, which was nuanced as well as poignant at the end. Mohammed Mansaray was the lad who’d lost his father, Great scenes between them.

It’s touring this autumn  Birmingham, Oxford. Inverness, Edinburgh, Southampton, Leeds.. It seemed to fit the Roundhouse so well it’s hard to imagine it in a more conventional setting. I might try Southampton.

If you got the references and jokes, this hugely vibrant and enjoyable production was 5 star. We both struggled with the story, partly because of  accent, partly because of cultural references we didn’t get. Not all were African … I got the Chelsea v Barcelona bit watching football, but my companion didn’t (loathes football).

I’d love to read the text, and then see it again. We both floundered so much on story, that I’ll have to say “3 star for ageing and ignorant white people who missed half the jokes.”

***

PROGRAMME

If you have to print it on recycled toilet paper, then £5 is excessive when other theatres print on real paper at £3.50 to £4 with better content.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
5 star
Paul Taylor Independent, (NT 2017) *****

4 star
Miriam Gillinson, Guardian (Roundhouse 2019) ****

There’s passionate political and personal debate as the men discuss Mugabe, Mandela, fallen leaders and absent fathers. Perhaps the most surprising aspect is just how tender this all-male play feels. Sure, there’s posturing and showboating, especially when Demmy Ladipo’s “bad boy” is showing off to the lads. But there are so many gentle moments in here too: a hard-up old man is given a free haircut; a barber offers a young dad some beautiful advice (“Listen to your child – he will teach you the right language”); and an anxious young actor finds a place to relax and confess his fears.

Nick Curtis, Standard (Roundhouse 2019) ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out (Roundhouse 2019) ****

In this gigantic north London gig venue it’s positively carnivalesque. It’s probably the best space in the country to stage something in the round; the cast has acres of space to perform Aline David’s extremely fun movement sequences; the giant light-up wireframe globe of Rae Smith’s set looks like it was made to sit under the vaulting dome of the Roundhouse roof. And perhaps most important, the pre-show has become central to the night.

Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph (NT 2017) ****
Cristiaa Ferrauti, The UpComing (Roundhouse 2019) ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

BIJAN SHEIBANI (Director)
A Taste of Honey, National Theatre, 2014

ANTHONY OFOEGBU
Titus Andronicus, RSC 2017
Anthony & Cleopatra RSC 2017
Julius Caesar, RSC 2017

OKORIE CHUKWU
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed), Globe 2016