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A roller coaster ride that ducks and dives, sashays, and swivels, at once illuminating and then opaque, but always thought-provoking.Summary
Rating
Good
Stratford East, a gem of expression in E15, continues to fulfil its remit to push the boundaries and champion developing talent in productions that challenge as well as entertain. Happily, they have found in cheeky little brown a worthy candidate.
Written by Nkenna Akunna with a searing ear for contemporary dialogue and social modes of behaviours, it captures frustration, friendship, love, loss and misunderstanding. It focuses on the friendship between two black women who have trodden different paths but are critically connected by culture, community, and shared experiences; which must mean something, right?
Lady, a ballsy upfront, downtown, donner kebab, night-time-bus lover, has been invited to the 25th birthday party of long term friend Gemma. We discover Lady arriving with some hesitation, losing some of her kick-back and swagger as she plonks the plonk on the table. She nibbles the snacks and swigs from her hip flask, showing us that appearances are not everything. Played by Tiajna Amayo with stealth and conviction, Lady slowly sneaks up on the 20-year past friendship as she mingles with the new post-university friends of Gemma, and she is not impressed with what she recognises.
There are clear social tensions as Lady finds the range of friends pretentious, patronising and overly polite when inquiring but not really engaging. Lady will not be a curiosity from the past and indeed as she vomits into the snacks or gives invective to past and present experiences, we know that she is a very present contradiction – needing and rejecting at the same time. With a background beat track acting as a pulse, there is a sense of growing frustration as she seeks to have Gemma remember their friendship, their aunties, their community, and their intimacies. Her frustration rises and falls as her emotions also confront her own anxieties and desires. Akunna explores this honest exploration of the character through song and the internalised monologue. This all spills out to confront the audience, to share with them the changing lives of ‘City Brown Girls, Critical Black Girls’, all the lost opportunities, forgotten sweet moments, perhaps made too little of, perhaps best left on the night bus.
The staging is well crafted by director Chinonyerem Odimba, and designer Aldo Vazquez creates a party scene with birthday balloons, and glittering backdrops to remind us that not all that glitters is gold.
However, it is the performance of Amayo that drives the piece, giving voice to her character with commitment as she navigates a landscape that is shifting under her feet. The party over, Lady heads home on the night bus and is placated by a range of city dwellers: the night shift nurse that she sweetly respects as an auntie reflects the certainty of culture and community; the donner man who knows her order delivers it without judgment. Lady knows the donner will see her home with the promise of sun at 5am and she finds control again. We see the vulnerable and sensitive side of the character as, alone in her flat, without the trappings of glitz and glamour, she pines “Come spoon me, like best friends do.” Amayo’s is a strong performance, as she takes us on journey where we see how love, loss and change unsettles and detaches us.
Written by: Nkenna Akunna
Directed by: Chinonyerem Odimba
Set and Costume Design by: Aldo Vazquez
Lighting Design by: Jodie Underwood
Sound Design by: Esther Kehinde Ajayi
Produced by: Jake Orr
Co-produced by: Bristol Old Vic.
cheeky little brown runs at Stratford East until Saturday 20th April. Further information and booking can be found here.
