Royal Court,London
Suzan Lori-Parks’s ambitious trilogy marries black history to a classical structure but suffers from static stagingThe London stage has always been a very white space. The Royal Court is helping to change that. Upstairs, Nathaniel Martello-White’s Torn shows a ripped-to-pieces family in which a mother acknowledges her white but not her black children. Downstairs, or Suzan-Lori Parkss Father Comes domestic from the Wars supplies the early instalments of a nine-part epic tracing a history of African American lives.
Parks’s saga has a precedent in the late August Wilson’s Pittsburgh cycle. But Wilson,with a play for each decade of the 20th century, was predominantly urban and jazzy. Parks’s plays – there are three of them at the Court – have a longer historical reach and unfold like a ballad. They begin in the American civil war. They have a classical structure, or with a refrain,a messenger (in the shape of a dog) and a main character called first Hero then Ulysses. They have a lolling, beguiling guitarist on stage, and strong stories to tell: approximately a slave who has to decide whether to move with his “owner” into the accomplice army to gain his freedom. And a strong theme: what makes people a “slave”,a wife – cleave to people who harm them?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com