Ear for eye

Some spoilers follow. . .

In my opinion, people are walking out because their expectations for the show (entertainment) don't match the content (education). Debbie Tucker Green moved away from narrative in her last piece, "a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone" towards more Churchill/Pinter type territory, where words are interrogated for their effects. Now it seems as if her suspicions about language as being a coded power structure, which have presumably resulted in her not using capital letters, have spread to a suspicion of dramatic narrative. This is alienating for fans of her previous work, where her poetry and insights were accompanied by the entertaining aspects of narrative storytelling.

While slavery is implicated as a root evil from which many issues derive, I think the play is not about slavery as such, but about how words are used as weapons. Since the point of the play is about the use of words, we are asked to use our "ears" as our "eyes" in this matter, to deconstruct the exact way language comes together to oppress.

For me, this is a difficult piece to assess. It forms three segmented parts, labelled as such, and while I felt the lengthy opening part was unduly alienating, I felt the second part was utterly brilliant, and I also liked the third part.

Spoilers follow. . .

This piece is structured like a legal argument thus:

Part 1: A compendium of the damage done by language in the context of race, both in the US and the UK;

Part 2: An extended illustrated scene demonstrating the mechanisms of language, and how it is coded and used to oppress;

Part 3: A closing argument that shows the origins of such oppressive language in racist laws, in the US and the UK.

Part 1 is so bone dry of narrative, so devoted to decoding language, that although the fragmented scenes depicting damage done to human beings by oppressive language could be overwhelmingly moving, instead they feel like a lecture from a geeky professor who has overestimated both her audience's intelligence and patience, and who bores them to tears. This tedium is ameliorated by astonishing performances by a stupendous cast (with Eric Kofi Abrefa the best of the best, so much feeling does he effortlessly emote), who will all go on to brilliant careers, but in truth, no matter how much feeling they try to inject, the material fights them back, and won't allow them to wallow in feeling and/or narrative. The piece doesn't want to be about that. It is instead like the parroting of names on a war memorial, listing the victims of stereotyping words, that pinhole black people as "aggressive" and "angry." Result: endless sounds of doors opening and closing, as audience members abandon hope, and flee.

Part 2: is utterly brilliant. Even more forensic than the first part, this minutely detailed look at a scene in which a white "male," played by Demetri Goritsas, attempts to dominate a black "female," Lashana Lynch, with familiar language tropes is, both revealing and hilarious. Goritsas beautifully conveys the self-righteousness unknowingness of a man unwittingly brainwashed by the very language he speaks, and Lynch reflects the frustration of someone who took the red pill and can see the bullsh*t underlying the language, but cannot escape the prison of the matrix she lives in. The humour and precision of this scene makes it easily the most effective and revealing of the play.

Part 3: is movies, in which US segregation laws and UK slavery laws of the past are read by everyday white people. It's a crushing and clever conclusion to the play, as it follows the river of the first two parts to their point of origin: the moment that the law gave power to evil conceptions and words, and gave birth to the methodology of the second part, and thus the immense and endless human carnage of the first part.

Overall, I think this is an important play, but by being too much the clever professor in the first lengthy part, Debbie Tucker Green alienates her audience so much that many have stopped listening by the time the play hits its hardest. For Eric Kofi Abrefa's soulfulness, for Goritsas' pedanticism, for Lashana Lynch's incredulity, for the insights of the third part, and above all, for the emotionally engaging and savagely funny second part of play, I give this 3 and a half stars.

"Random" and "Nut" are also my favourites. I did enjoy "Hang" too, though less, as the characters weren't likeable, and "Truth and Reconciliation" was alright, though the multiplicity of characters in that meant we didn't get deep enough with them.

There really aren't any characters in part 1 of this: just condensed raging poetry, which requires more attention than Shakespeare to follow, I reckon.

I suspect the no-interval thing is because they fear audiences will run for the hills, and never get to the good bits otherwise lol. It's quite remarkable that so many people are willing to endure the antisocial hell of leaving mid-performance anyway. That should die down now that people actually know what they are getting from the reviews, which is the main reason I included so many spoilers myself, to help people who really want to be there to be there, but more so, to help the people who really aren't up for this sort of thing to save their cash and time for something more to their taste.