FringeReview UK 2024
G
Royal Court Theatre and SISTER
Genre: Drama, LGBTQIA+, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Surrealism, Theatre
Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Tife Kusoro’s G at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs is directed by Monique Touko till September 21st.
G thrills with possibility, the punch-through of enormous talent finding itself. Rough edges unskeined by Touko’s tireless and innovative team, a touch of underdevelopment, ends as exhilarating discovery. Exactly what the Royal Court is for.
Written by Tife Kusoro, Directed by Monique Touko, Set Design Madeleine Boyd and Lighting Design Adam King, Sound Designer Khalil Madovi, Video Designer Tyler Forward, Choreographer Movement Director & Fight Director Kloé Dean, Costumer Designer & Supervisor Rianna Azoro
Casting Director Jatinder Chera, Production Manager Ian Taylor, Stage Manager Nick Graham, DSM Stacey Nurse, Co-Producer SISTER
Till September 21st
Review
“Maybe if you stop chatting shit you’d feel it.” A charcoal-grey gloaming, a hand stretched from a rectangular hole. It’s neither horror nor comedic but a gripping play where urban myth’s the crucible and young Black teens are made and marred in it. But they also know the real world can chase you to death in a police car. Tife Kusoro’s G at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs is directed by Monique Touko till September 21st.
Someone was run down here 20 years ago, is still out for revenge. Three Year 11s, Kai, Khaleem and Joy don’t dishonour Baitface. They won’t walk directly under his mysteriously gleaming white shoes dangling from a phone line. They respect him, gently touching them before moving on,
So when Khaleem tries impressing his girlfriend via phone, taking down those pristine shoes, he’s in trouble. His homework diary turns up at the scene of a crime – a crime never specified but suggesting someone “vulnerable”. And not just Khaleem: like the Ancient Mariner, his transgression costs his two friends too.
In just 80 minutes we’re in two worlds lurching inside and out of a CCTV at a particular moment in a thrill of switchbacks that proves riveting if occasionally blurry. It’s always termed ‘The Night In Question’: the three are continually rewound to it. Release though only brings the real world walling them in with interrogations. And since Khaleem and his friends can’t account for their whereabouts, the bland BBC-style voicing in Khalil Madovi’s sound design takes on an accusatory establishment chorus. Offstage, Khaleem is questioned, bright Kai is put on red for the first time since Year 7; and his e-scooter is napped: his dad will kill him. Joy’s transition is dissed by people he trusts.
Madeleine Boyd’s platform set cut with that lozenge centre and walled each end plays host to Adam King’s lighting (glaring with spotlit searchlights) and Tyler Forward’s remarkable and constantly-deployed video design. Incising words on the stage floor visible in traverse, the complex and layered text is made nearly complete sense of. It helps to read the full text though. Alternate identities the trio take on are quietly dropped.
Joy (Kadiesha Belgrave) is the one most attuned to Baitface, the most mature, with the result that Joy’s journey is less explored. Belgrave though renders Joy believable, telegraphing brief moments of doubt. Joy’s working through gender identity and in one shocking moment forced to resile from it in dress. A theme too sketched in, another ten minutes of Joy’s dilemmas would be welcome.
Khaleem (powerful but quickly spooked in Ebenezer Gyau’s portrayal) the most laddish but close to a grandparent, desperately demands loyalty from an unimpressed girlfriend, and his friends. Privileged head boy Kai (Selorm Adonu, swervy, nervy and exhilarating) can’t cope with a sudden blemish on his status: entrapped by the judgement of teachers and parents. A single red and your world’s in freefall.
Choreographed in particular by movement (and effectively fight) director Kloé Dean, Dani Harris-Walters’ Baitface appears as white-clad revenant, mimicking the trio’s actions unseen, and eventually visible. He might crouch on the ground at your feet, the space being that intimate. The crucial question is, what does Baitface want? Is this a repeat pattern of others fated to destruction the way he was?
Kusoro invokes urban legends, Afro-surrealism and intricate staging to deploy a layered myth as redemptive: but it’s a warning too. A convincingly-wrought tightrope teeters coming-of-age in perilously sassy dialogue testing itself, kerned with school bant. It fights the dread of gothic forces just out of reach, certainly out of control. Stretching words, a few muscles and sensibilities seems the only thing these three likeable children can muster.
Above all, there’s no redemption for a hostile environment baked into so many young lives. One that might only be combatted by other forces than rational, and by (almost) the operation of a haunted grace, an agency outside teen control. However it ends, the message is bleak. Spectral help for a crime you don’t know about is the only thing stopping Kafka being chased into Belmarsh.
It’s a world the Court often exposes, even when comedic. There’s the out-of-control way Jasmine Lee- Jones’ Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner spirals when two friends just suggest what the play’s title invokes: they’re taken literally, as of course they would be.
Lee-Jones’ play won awards in 2019. Kusoro received the George Devine Award for promising writers. And G thrills with possibility, the punch-through of enormous talent finding itself. Rough edges unskeined by Touko’s tireless and innovative team, a touch of underdevelopment, ends as exhilarating discovery. Exactly what the Royal Court is for.
