Post by Steve on Jan 25, 2018 23:01:02 GMT
Three great performances, of three great characters, by Sope Dirisu, Jonathan Ajayi and Anthony Welsh, make Bijan Sheibani's poetic revival pure electricity.
Some spoilers follow. . .
Characters, how they speak, how they relate, are everything here, so plot takes something of a back seat. Further, the playwright and director clearly intend the character relations depicted to assume a universal mythic resonance, so there are African drums and musical accompaniment, the action is staged in the round in an intimate chalk circle, and characters narrate their own entrances and exits in the third person.
Yet despite such distancing techniques, I cannot imagine seeing three more astonishingly vital performances again in the remaining eleven months of this year.
The playwright, Tarell Alvin McCraney co-wrote the Oscar winning movie "Moonlight," based on his own play, and what made that movie resonate, also makes this show resonate: principally, the poetic, unstereotypical, depiction of the relations of complex and sensitive African American men, in which the dialogue sizzles in it's authenticity, humour and sharpness.
Still, it's the performances that thrilled me most: Sope Dirisu towers as a lumbering tank of a man, Ogun, with the softest centre; Anthony Welsh is languorously steamy in his enigmatic looseness, and, as Ogun's weak-willed lost brother, Oshoosi, Jonathan Ajayi is a tragi-comic tour de force, as his lazy body lithely contorts into the most wild and crazy effusive comic explosions ever seen in a straight performance.
Truly astounding performances, and great characters, more than compensate for the plot-light, myth-heavy stylings of McCraney, which while effective, are not to my instinctive taste.
4 and a half stars!
Some spoilers follow. . .
Characters, how they speak, how they relate, are everything here, so plot takes something of a back seat. Further, the playwright and director clearly intend the character relations depicted to assume a universal mythic resonance, so there are African drums and musical accompaniment, the action is staged in the round in an intimate chalk circle, and characters narrate their own entrances and exits in the third person.
Yet despite such distancing techniques, I cannot imagine seeing three more astonishingly vital performances again in the remaining eleven months of this year.
The playwright, Tarell Alvin McCraney co-wrote the Oscar winning movie "Moonlight," based on his own play, and what made that movie resonate, also makes this show resonate: principally, the poetic, unstereotypical, depiction of the relations of complex and sensitive African American men, in which the dialogue sizzles in it's authenticity, humour and sharpness.
Still, it's the performances that thrilled me most: Sope Dirisu towers as a lumbering tank of a man, Ogun, with the softest centre; Anthony Welsh is languorously steamy in his enigmatic looseness, and, as Ogun's weak-willed lost brother, Oshoosi, Jonathan Ajayi is a tragi-comic tour de force, as his lazy body lithely contorts into the most wild and crazy effusive comic explosions ever seen in a straight performance.
Truly astounding performances, and great characters, more than compensate for the plot-light, myth-heavy stylings of McCraney, which while effective, are not to my instinctive taste.
4 and a half stars!
