Black Venus

Staged, reading, work in progress, showcase… This new work by Jonathan Cash (The First Domino) given voice for the first time by director Faynia Williams certainly provoked a response – some good and some vociferously outraged. For me it was the start of something very promising and deeply disturbing, and if writer and director do with it what they have proved that they can in the past it should be a great piece when complete. Josephine Baker returns to her Paris mansion to have dinner with Hermann Goering and what ensues is a mix of flirtation of a sexual and murderous nature. Anna-Maria Nabirye plays a good Josephine Baker, lithe and sexy. Ross Gurney-Randall is excellent if a little too animated as Goering, but I put that down to part reading for this performance. Unfinished, I feel it inappropriate to award stars, but this is certainly one to watch.

Concorde II, 20 May 2013
Andrew Kay