It's 70 years since the first Caribbeans stepped off the Empire Windrush and onto British soil, an anniversary that's recently been tarnished by the knowledge that even seven decades on, their status as British citizens is far from secure. Mufaro Makubika's richly textured play ‘Shebeen’ is shot through with the same ideas of precarity, of living under constant threat from a repressive, white law enforcement system.
It's 1958, and George (Karl Collins) is a former boxing star who's hung up his gloves, fed up of risking his life for a crowd's entertainment. His wife Pearl (a wonderfully charismatic Martina Laird) is the brains behind the family’s new source of income: she's turned their crumbling living room into a shebeen, a party where drinks are sold and music plays. And she delivers most of the play’s best lines, too. Early on, she runs rings round a white policeman, charming him with rum and gentle flirtation, so that he forgets he ever meant to warn George off their illicit new business.
The first act of Makubika's play moves slowly, fleshing out this couple and the guests that come to their nightly hangouts. The playwright draws these people well, capturing the sewing machinist who's stirred up resentment by outperforming her white colleagues, the frustrated young guy who's a target for racist groups of men, the young white women who's seduced by a world that's utterly new to her. Matthew Xia's production soundtracks their partying with vintage calypso: but the music's too quiet, and the people dancing to it too tucked away at the back of the stage, for the warmth and fun to fully spill off the stage.
If ‘Shebeen’ takes a while to get going, the second half has the opposite problem, cramming a sudden influx of incident into a short space of time. The bobby that Pearl’s carefully softened up comes back, with a much more brutal superior in tow. Then, as Pearl and George struggle to sort through the wreckage, Mrs Clark, pays a visit. Hazel Ellerby plays a white woman whose ‘turning a blind eye’ to her daughter Mary’s frequenting of the shebeen gives way to fury when she realises Mary (Chloe Harris) is in a relationship with Linford (Theo Solomon).
It’s emotive stuff, a speech full of the kind of behind-closed-doors racism that doesn't usually get aired on stage. And it gets an appropriately furious response from the audience, too. But having it come from a character who we haven’t built up a relationship with gives it a sense of disconnect from the story that's gone before: it feels like a slap, not a betrayal. And there's not quite room within the action that follows to explore the ideas and feelings that moment stirs up.
‘Shebeen’ mixes an unflinching, intense text from Makubika with a production that's got a nostalgic feel: Grace Smart's old-school scenography makes this living room panto-vivid, stuffed with portraits of the Queen to vintage records. This sense of quaintness means that the sudden moments of violence and racism in the play sit strangely, like a dead rat on a china tea service.
The night I saw ‘Shebeen’, what should have been the play's most intense moments were met with audience laughter. Laughter can mean a lot of things: it can be a sign of discomfort, of release, as well as of detached amusement. But here, it felt like a sign that this story's bitter 21st century relevance wasn't hitting home. In a production that introduced its darkness earlier, this story's blows would have found more space to land.
It's 1958, and George (Karl Collins) is a former boxing star who's hung up his gloves, fed up of risking his life for a crowd's entertainment. His wife Pearl (a wonderfully charismatic Martina Laird) is the brains behind the family’s new source of income: she's turned their crumbling living room into a shebeen, a party where drinks are sold and music plays. And she delivers most of the play’s best lines, too. Early on, she runs rings round a white policeman, charming him with rum and gentle flirtation, so that he forgets he ever meant to warn George off their illicit new business.
The first act of Makubika's play moves slowly, fleshing out this couple and the guests that come to their nightly hangouts. The playwright draws these people well, capturing the sewing machinist who's stirred up resentment by outperforming her white colleagues, the frustrated young guy who's a target for racist groups of men, the young white women who's seduced by a world that's utterly new to her. Matthew Xia's production soundtracks their partying with vintage calypso: but the music's too quiet, and the people dancing to it too tucked away at the back of the stage, for the warmth and fun to fully spill off the stage.
If ‘Shebeen’ takes a while to get going, the second half has the opposite problem, cramming a sudden influx of incident into a short space of time. The bobby that Pearl’s carefully softened up comes back, with a much more brutal superior in tow. Then, as Pearl and George struggle to sort through the wreckage, Mrs Clark, pays a visit. Hazel Ellerby plays a white woman whose ‘turning a blind eye’ to her daughter Mary’s frequenting of the shebeen gives way to fury when she realises Mary (Chloe Harris) is in a relationship with Linford (Theo Solomon).
It’s emotive stuff, a speech full of the kind of behind-closed-doors racism that doesn't usually get aired on stage. And it gets an appropriately furious response from the audience, too. But having it come from a character who we haven’t built up a relationship with gives it a sense of disconnect from the story that's gone before: it feels like a slap, not a betrayal. And there's not quite room within the action that follows to explore the ideas and feelings that moment stirs up.
‘Shebeen’ mixes an unflinching, intense text from Makubika with a production that's got a nostalgic feel: Grace Smart's old-school scenography makes this living room panto-vivid, stuffed with portraits of the Queen to vintage records. This sense of quaintness means that the sudden moments of violence and racism in the play sit strangely, like a dead rat on a china tea service.
The night I saw ‘Shebeen’, what should have been the play's most intense moments were met with audience laughter. Laughter can mean a lot of things: it can be a sign of discomfort, of release, as well as of detached amusement. But here, it felt like a sign that this story's bitter 21st century relevance wasn't hitting home. In a production that introduced its darkness earlier, this story's blows would have found more space to land.