By Pearl Cleage
Directed by Lynette Linton
Set and costume by Frankie Bradshaw
Composer Benjamin Kwasi Burrell
Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London
Friday 14th October 2022 19.30
CAST
Ronke Adekouejo- Delia Patterson
Lincoln Conway- Ensemble
Eddie Elliot – Ensemble
Osy Ikhile- Leland Cunningham
Kimberley Okoye – Ensemble
Helena Pipe – Ensemble (to lead role)
Sule Rimi- Sam Thomas
Giles Terera – Guy Jacobs
Samira Wiley- Angel Allen (understudy- Helen Pipe)
Pearl Cleage’s play was first performed in 1995. It’s set in New York in 1930, in the Haarlem Renaissance era.
The strength in depth of the production was shown by Helena Pipe replacing Samira Wiley in the lead role. They are physically very different. This means they must have complete sets of understudy costumes. You would never have guessed she was an understudy. Therefore the selected photos show Samira Wiley as Angel, not Helena Pipe.
The Lyttelton proscenium stage is ultra wide, and full use has been made of it. The set consists of an apartment building with full height exterior fire escapes on both sides. There are two apartments, the larger one is rented by Guy, a gay costume designer. The smaller one is rented by Delia, who works in a then controversial Family Planning clinic, though the word at the time was ‘Birth Control’. There is a hallway and stairway separating them, and a stoop out front on the street. The whole building can be angled a few degrees on a revolve stage to focus on the apartment where action is taking place. Twice, briefly, it angles sideways to show the exterior of Guy’s apartment.
There are five name characters, but the added ensemble come and go, stand on the fire escapes, pass in the street, giving an atmosphere of movement and activity- even though they are one person short, with Helena Pipe taking over the lead role from Samira Wiley.
Guy (Giles Terera) is a very camp fashion designer. He never seems to appear twice in the same clothes. He dreams of designing costumes for the real Josephine Baker, then a star in Paris. His flat mate , Angel (tonight Helena Pipe), is a night club singer, who has been a gangster’s moll to some Italian-American mafiosi.
Delia (Ronke Adekoluejo) is a sweet innocent, working for the Birth Control / Family Planning clinic. Then we have Sam, a medical doctor (Sule Rimi) and he is attracted to Delia and vice versa.
The fifth person is Leland, (Osy Ikilhi) a widower from rural Alabama who takes a sincere fancy to Angel and wants to marry her. The thing is, given a choice of going to Paris with Guy, or having Leland’s baby, Angel is determined to go for the good time.
There is one big production song, Hold On, to close Act One, sung by Angel, and a few shorter pieces, one sung by Guy. It is not a musical, but a play with a couple of songs. They could have done more with the songs. Guy is a marvellous comic creation beautifully played by Giles Terera.
The romantic scene between Delia and Sam in Act Two is poignantly hilarious, but then the play can switch to sharp tragedy.
In the most dramatic moment the lighting plot threw the entire set into black and white profile. It was stunning whoever you are but if you’ve done lighting, you want to stand and applaud!
The warnings outside about ‘strong language’ puzzled us. There isn’t any.
What there is, is that the African-American playwright, Pearl Cleage (born 1948), uses the accurate vocabulary of 1930 – coloured, negro, homosexual. I can only think that the National Theatre feels those three words which are ‘reflective of the era’ are too ‘strong’ for a sensitive 2022 audience. The Nella Larsen Harlem Renaissance novel, Passing (1929) uses the same words (and also the N-word, which this play does not) – and is a recent (2021) film. What else are you supposed to do? In 1930, ‘negro’ was the polite self-identification term. The word ‘gay’ still meant ‘cheerful.’
Accents are generic American,. and well-done. I thought Leland should have had a distinctive Southern ‘country’ African-American accent, as a new arrival in the big city. It’s a markedly different accent, but that’s only a quibble.
As the play moved from comedy to tragedy, there were gasps from the totally involved audience then an instant standing ovation at the end. It was a terrific production and I enjoyed every minute of it. Of the three plays on this London theatre trip, John Gabriel Borkman and The Crucible, this was the only one to receive a standing ovation.
****
THE NATIONAL THEATRE SHOP …
As with Jack Absolute the shop had a Blues For An Alabama Sky section, also with books on (and from) the Haarlem Renaissance.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
five stars
Abbie Grundy, Broadway World *****
The i: *****
four stars
Claire Armitstead, The Guardian ****
Susannah Clapp,. The Observer ****
Tim Robey, The Telegraph ****
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage ****
Alice Savile, Time Out ****
Financial Times, ****
The Stage ****
The Reviews Hub ****
three stars
Clive Davis, The Times ***
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
GILES TERERA
Hamilton, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, London 2018 (Aaron Burr)
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertold Brecht, Donmar Warehouse 2017
King John, Shakespeare, The Globe 2015
SULE RIMI
Jitney by August Wilson, Bath Theatre Royal, 2022
Peter Viney's Blog 
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