Greenwich + Docklands International Festival centrepiece ‘The Architect’ is a tribute to Stephen Lawrence. But it’s not exactly about Stephen Lawrence. Instead the show – performed on a bus, written by a series of big-name Black British playwrights – takes a fragmented approach to tracing the life of a boy named Asher who is, I suppose, a sort of alternate Lawrence. As the show begins it’s 1993 and Asher (Dalumizi Moyo) is a smart young Black man who dreams of becoming an architect – as Lawrence did – waiting with his friend (Omar Austin) for the 122 bus.
While Matthew Xia’s production is very careful to avoid crass irony, the big difference – and presumably the rationale for the setting – is that Asher makes the bus. Lawrence, of course, never did, murdered by a racist gang while waiting for the 122 in April 1993.
The show is set across multiple timelines, whose connections to each other are not always apparent until late on. But there are scenes clearly set in the present in which we meet the adult version of Asher (Karl Collins). He’s now an architect: buzzing with ideas, passionate about social housing.
There’s something moving about the show’s understatedness, and a defiance in presenting an image of Black happiness – even Black mundanity – as a response to the horror of Lawrence’s murder.
But this same understatedness leaves it feeling a little unsubstantial as drama. There’s a novelty to seeing a show staged on a bus, and a pleasure at seeing how it all works logistically. The stories are small, but do all come together effectively. When the bus goes past the site of Lawrence’s murder it’s both moving – most of us have never knowingly seen the spot – and gives an emotional focal point to a story that might hitherto have felt nebulous (it’s unlikely you’d have tickets to ‘The Architect’ without being aware of the Stephen Lawrence connection… but if that had somehow happened, this would be where the penny dropped).
Still, considering the stature of the writers – Roy Williams, Bola Agbaje – the text is fairly lightweight. Probably that’s by design, but a lot of it ends up feeling extraneous. In some ways a sequence in which Moyo’s 18-year-old Asher just stares blankly at the back of the bus for a few minutes is more powerful than all the writing combined: the mundane moments his counterpart never experienced.
As part of the free GDIF, ‘The Architect’ isn’t bound by the same imperatives as a conventional theatre production. A £50-a-ticket National Theatre drama about Stephen Lawrence might be expected to offer more. This is a gesture as much as it is a play. But it’s a powerful gesture.
You’ve not got much chance of bagging a place on the bus now (ie it’s sold out). But after each bus trip there’s a free-to-all, open-air show in the centre of Woolwich called ‘The Architect’s Dream’, which combines live steel drum music with a stirring speech from Collins’s older Asher about his visions for a future London, followed, finally by the unfurling of a picture of Stephen Lawrence. In some ways it’s as potent as the journey itself - the good people of Woolwich are certainly advised to come on down.