FringeReview UK 2024

Boy In Da Korma

Footprints Festival, Jermyn Street Theatre

Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, European Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Live Music, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre

Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

So Tupac never died. Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival of six new plays continues with a writer/actor/singer Jasail Marmion’s Boy In Da Korma directed by Ben Grant.

Marmion’s persona Liam (Jasail Marmion’s imaginary, close but not) asserts Tupac was reincarnated – as a half-Indian, half-Irish boy on the rural South-West Coast of Ireland. His mother loves Van Morrison. Need one say more? A lot more in fat before Morrison can be mentioned again. But differently.

And in just under an hour you’re subjected to some of the most engaging storytelling I’ve seen in recent months. And when will that guitar in the corner go off?

Marmion’s a riveting performer with a range of voices of mother, cornet-playing maternal grandfather where he gets his talent from (and an Irish gene of singing, that never entirely goes away); as well as school antagonist and friend apiece with a range of voices from coaxing to growling, skirling to gravelly.

Marmion’s rapid shifts of persona as re as deft and sometimes dazzling as his hip-hop riffs, cleverly recruiting Tupac and other rappers’\s songs for his own local takes on the latest calamity to be fall Liam.

Liam like Morrison might be “about as far from West Coast hip hop as humanly possible.” But it’s what 17-year old Liam believes with his soul-dipped music: the world’s next rap superstar – Straight Outta Skibbereen has to get to Cork’s Got Talent first. I mean Louis Walsh might not appreciate Liam, and fall asleep to rap. But Liam finds, accidentally, almost tragically, just how to wake him up.

The storytelling’s hugely aided by video and projection Designer Douglas Baker, with lighting by David Doyle, (overall Festival lighting Laura Howard) should be up for an award. Stencilled precisely against Festival designer Natalie Johnson’s set background for The Good John Proctor (a thing of gables against blue, and here reversed to white), it plays engagingly with projections of anything from a hospital ward to a bus, and a range of designs projected into each lozenge of the background outlined in wood. It’s the sharpest piece of storytelling in video lighting I can recall.

It even recalls Rachel Sampley’s superb work here at JST: and her magnificent projections on Compositor E at the Omnibus – the  finest in a small venue last year. That’s the highest compliment I can give.

And Marmion’s work as well as acing deserves it. A boy emerging to find his own voice distantly recalls The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, here wholly made Liam’s own journey, with a deeper crisis occasioning it. The title referring to a nasty spate of school bullying – racism and being the “only brown boy” for miles leaves its mark, explains part of Liam’s decisions, despite his well-intentioned friend suggesting it’s “cultural appropriation”.

Liam’s mother is anxious, seemingly against Liam’s decisions, but ultimately it goes deeper. And each time ism makes a selfish but necessary decision to desert his ailing grandfather (a condition he in part caused) a crisis deepens their bond, and Liam’s sense of where he belongs.

Naturally Liam gets to Cork’s Got Talent. What happens is a necessary, engaging, original variation on finding your voice: and a theatrical coup. Acting, writing, directing, video, lighting and tech support, indeed singing are first class. A gem.

Published January 18, 2024 by Simon Jenner