In The Lonely Londoners, Roy Williams lifts the words from the pages of Sam Selvon’s seminal 1956 novel about the Windrush generation in London and sears them onto the stage. Ebenezer Bamgboye’s hugely evocative production has secured a richly deserved upgrade to the Kiln Theatre after opening last year at Jermyn Street Theatre.
Moses (Solomon Israel) is our eyes and ears into the city as he greets – and quickly shows the ropes to – other immigrants from the Caribbean seeking a new life. This includes a swaggering newbie that Moses nicknames ‘Galahad’ (Romario Simpson), ‘Big City’ (Gilbert Kyem Jnr), dreaming of hosting a steel-band club night, and Lewis (Tobi Bakare), who’s awaiting the arrival of his wife, Agnes (Shannon Hayes), and his mother, Tanty (Carol Moses).
Williams burnishes his reputation as an unflinching chronicler of the complicated and often ugly side of our national psyche. From the novel’s picaresque shape, he has crafted a story that touches on Black immigrant experiences without patronising his characters. We feel their rage in a postwar UK that has exploited their citizenship for gain but treats them like dirt.
Bamgboye’s superb staging forgoes the trappings of conventional period drama, loosening the 1950s setting to speak as much to the here and now as to the past. The blue luggage boxes that the characters carry or sit on in Laura Ann Price’s sparse set are a constant reminder of their enforced sense of impermanence in this chilly metropolis, with its alien place names and even colder, racist, white citizens. Nevena Stojkov’s fluid movement direction beautifully captures love, anger and defiance.
As Selvon brought London vividly to life through the voices of the Black working-class people living in it, Bamgboye does so on stage as a profoundly sensory experience. Sound designer Tony Gayle mixes bands like Blur into something that often echoes the rush of blood in your ears. Elliot Griggs’s stunning LED lighting backdrop restlessly swirls into patterns that evoke both the dazzle and the dangers facing the marginalised in a changing city.
The ensemble cast are exceptional, from a charismatic Simpson’s bruising collapse of Galahad’s optimism, to Kyem Jnr’s deft mixture of comedy and pathos as Big City, to the way that Israel shifts Moses from paternalistic patter to heart-wrenching regret as he recalls his life in Trinidad. However, this is a play about women as well as men. As Bakare’s boiling-pot Lewis turns to violence, Hayes powerfully embodies the impact of this as Agnes.
When they’re not in scenes, Hayes, Moses (a fiery, funny Carol) and Aimée Powell (who plays Christina, Moses’ ex-lover in Trinidad) all sit facing the audience. During the chest-puffing and posturing between the men, even as we’re laughing, they stare us down. They act as witnesses – an on-stage reminder that discrimination doesn’t discriminate in the ripples of harm it causes. It adds another layer of depth to this brilliant production.
