Evaluation: cheeky little brown, Stratford East

Evaluation: cheeky little brown, Stratford East

Stratford East, a gem of expression in E15, continues to fulfil its remit to push the boundaries and champion creating expertise in productions that problem in addition to entertain. Fortunately, they’ve present in cheeky little brown a worthy candidate.

Written by Nkenna Akunna with a searing ear for modern dialogue and social modes of behaviours, it captures frustration, friendship, love, loss and misunderstanding. It focuses on the friendship between two black ladies who’ve trodden completely different paths however are critically related by tradition, neighborhood, and shared experiences; which should imply one thing, proper?

Woman, a ballsy upfront, downtown, donner kebab, night-time-bus lover, has been invited to the twenty fifth birthday celebration of long run good friend Gemma. We uncover Woman arriving with some hesitation, dropping a few of her kick-back and swagger as she plonks the plonk on the desk. She nibbles the snacks and swigs from her hip flask, exhibiting us that appearances are usually not the whole lot. Performed by Tiajna Amayo with stealth and conviction, Woman slowly sneaks up on the 20-year previous friendship as she mingles with the brand new post-university associates of Gemma, and she or he just isn’t impressed with what she recognises. 

There are clear social tensions as Woman finds the vary of associates pretentious, patronising and overly well mannered when inquiring however not likely partaking. Woman is not going to be a curiosity from the previous and certainly as she vomits into the snacks or provides invective to previous and current experiences, we all know that she is a really current contradiction – needing and rejecting on the similar time. With a background beat observe appearing as a pulse, there’s a sense of rising frustration as she seeks to have Gemma bear in mind their friendship, their aunties, their neighborhood, and their intimacies. Her frustration rises and falls as her feelings additionally confront her personal anxieties and needs. Akunna explores this trustworthy exploration of the character via track and the internalised monologue. This all spills out to confront the viewers, to share with them the altering lives of ‘Metropolis Brown Ladies, Important Black Ladies’, all of the misplaced alternatives, forgotten candy moments, maybe made too little of, maybe finest left on the evening bus.

The staging is nicely crafted by director Chinonyerem Odimba, and designer Aldo Vazquez creates a celebration scene with birthday balloons, and glittering backdrops to remind us that not all that glitters is gold.

Nevertheless, it’s the efficiency of Amayo that drives the piece, giving voice to her character with dedication as she navigates a panorama that’s shifting beneath her ft. The social gathering over, Woman heads residence on the evening bus and is placated by a variety of metropolis dwellers: the evening shift nurse that she sweetly respects as an auntie displays the knowledge of tradition and neighborhood; the donner man who is aware of her order delivers it with out judgment. Woman is aware of the donner will see her residence with the promise of solar at 5am and she or he finds management once more. We see the susceptible and delicate aspect of the character as, alone in her flat, with out the trimmings of glitz and glamour, she pines “Come spoon me, like finest associates do.” Amayo’s is a robust efficiency, as she takes us on journey the place we see how love, loss and alter unsettles and detaches us.

This manufacturing is co-produced with Bristol Previous Vic.

Playwright: Nkenna Akunna

Director: Chinonyerem Odimba

Set and Costume Designer: Aldo Vazquez

Lighting Designer: Jodie Underwood 

Sound Designer: Esther Kehinde Ajayi 

Producer: Jake Orr

cheeky little brown runs at Stratford East till Saturday twentieth April.

Additional info and reserving might be discovered right here.