SAFE SPACE
Ernest Kingsley Jr and Jamie Bogyo. Photo Helen Murray
It’s always fascinating to see a new play, especially at a time when so much of what we are being presented with is a revival or a classic, safe choices that will put paying bottoms on seats. It’s understandable of course, the costs of producing and touring have rocketed and in turn investors in live entertainment are surely risk averse, so hats off to Chichester Festival Theatre for recognising the potential in Jamie Bogyo’s play. Bogyo studied play writing at Yale University and acting at the RADA the programme notes tell me, and he is not without a fair slice of West End experience too, a very credible track record for sure.
And what emerges from that is a very entertaining evening of vibrant theatre that is both thought provoking and fun. Set on campus at Yale it follows a group of five students whose lives cross as the student body challenge the faculty to change the name of their college, an institution named in honour of a man who was an active part of the world of slavery. It’s 2017 and globally there is an awareness that once celebrated public figures, politicians and heroes are less than heroic, racists and exploiters of humanity. In this story it’s John C Calhoun. Let’s cancel!
That is the core of this new work, but it is not the only thread and if it was it could be a rather dour and solid work of theatre, nothing wrong with that in one sense, but here Bogyo has done something rather more interesting. This play is of course about racism and exploitation, but it is also about the nature of friendship, about coming of age and about shedding the ideals perhaps learnt from our families and our backgrounds and discovering one’s self.
Ernest Kingsley Jr and Jamie Bogyo Jr. Photo Helen Murray
The next thing he does is instil so much humour into the writing, the whole evening is packed with a lightness to balance the dark side of the story, at times delivered with such speed that there is a sense of farce, rapid fire exits and entrances, confusion and misunderstanding. Add sexual intrigue, deception and ambition to the mix and there’s a lot going on, perhaps at moments rather too much going on and the frenetic action becomes a little cluttered. It doesn’t detract from the whole but a few moments to take a breath would be welcome.
Bola Akeju and Céline Buckens. Photo Helen Buckens
Bogyo has not only written this but also plays Connor, a robust all American white boy with a passion for a Capella singing. He shares a room with Isaiah, a black American scholar, less confident but bonded by an equal passion for singing. Ernest Kingsley Jr plays the role with such charm, a genuine sense of innocence and youth. Céline Buckens is Annabelle, the radical should be waspish white girl whose ambitions are focused. Utterly believable in the role as is Bola Akeju as Stacy who emerges from the passive young black student to be revealed as something quite quite different.
Ivan Oyik And Ernest Kingsley Jr. Photo Helen Murray
Finally we have Omar played by Ivan Oyik. Omar is the noisy one, the activist at the heart of the protest who as the story opens up is revealed to be not quite what we might have assumed. There are no grown ups on stage, they are merely a haunting authoritarian presence, there but not there.
I would have liked a little more backstory at times, how do Connor and Isaiah become friends and end up as room mates, what is Connor’s background or Isaiah’s for that matter, but that would no doubt have necessitated shedding some of the other elements of the play that make it such an entertaining evening.
Roy Alexander Weise directs with clarity and pace, perhaps at times too much pace, but the whole is well rounded and captures a sense of time and place and of course captures we the audience. And Bogyo? Certainly a name to follow.
Oh yes, in addition to this we get some very beautiful singing from Bogyo and Kingsley. It’s not in any sense a musical but those few delightful moments of song lend a magic that gives the whole an added appeal.
Andrew Kay
17 October
Minerva Theatre Chichester
Rating:
