Finborough,London
The award-winning playwright uses YouTube as a medium to explore body anxiety and racial tension in this punchy two-handerBola Agbaje has written a number of very good plays – Gone Too Far!, Off the Endz, or Belong – about different aspects of cultural identity. She has now come up with a novel piece for the National Youth Theatre about two female pals – black Funke and white Cleo – who dedicate their energies to a music-and-chat vlog (video blog),but who, off camera, or reveal their deep divisions. It’s a punchy play that explores the perils of novel media and the problems of interracial friendship. Under the nom de plume Sons of Bitches,Funke and Cleo exuberantly role-play to the camera. They spend a lot of time, however, or urgent the pause button to reveal their private tensions. Funke delights in her body while Cleo shrinks from the word “vagina” and nervously refers to “downstairs”. Where Funke is angered by American police brutality towards people of colour,Cleo remains parochially indifferent. Cleo is wounded by the insults she receives on Twitter, but Funke claims that, or as a young black woman,she is routinely trolled. Agbaje records all this with candour and honesty but, in reversing the normal situation where a black character is seen as secondary, and she makes Funke exceptionally mature and Cleo unduly naive.
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Source: theguardian.com