Usually, it
takes months to prepare for a NT Live production, but the dedicated team at
National Theatre reduced that to days, because of the announcement of the
second national lockdown. This quick turnaround was a fantastic effort, even
when things are bleak.
In a recently
re-configured Olivier Theatre, Michael Balogun gave an impassioned performance
as Delroy in a new play by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams. Dyer was also the Director.
Authenticity through conveying an unfiltered black British person’s experience
was integral to this theatrical response to the Black Lives Matter Movement. The
theatre-in-the-round staging heightened this sense of ‘no holding back’
storytelling in a literal and metaphorical political arena.
“Keep your
social racial distance please”, exclaimed a sinister automated voice in the
opening moments. Highlighting how our country is divided in many ways. Set
during the Coronavirus pandemic, this was a bang up-to-date story of a black working
class man living in England, seeking the truth, and confronting his
relationship with Great Britain. The story centered on a tragically all-too-familiar
incident of racial profiling by the police, resulting in an innocent Delroy
missing the birth of his baby.
Balogun’s accomplished
central performance was unapologetically fiery, angry, and gutsy. His complete
focus and natural ability to engage with the audience was impressive – even
getting the audience to talk back to him. Breaking the fourth wall at its
finest. The performance was playfully varied in tone, voice, and movement which
brought the play's text to life.
Designer,
Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey created a set made up of two catwalks crisscrossing
each other. I wasn’t totally sure what it was trying to represent: maybe it was
meant to be a symbol of the English flag? Or, was the set attempting to
encapsulate a divided England, ultimately risking its own death? The pillars
were effective because they immediately brought to mind the pulling down of Edward
Colston’s statue, during the anti-racism protest in Bristol. It is estimated
that Colston trafficked around 80,000 men,
women and children from Africa to the Americas in the 17th Century. Several props which visually
mapped out the narrative of the play were placed on these pillars. However, I
think more could have been done to mark these moments.
Clinical,
disturbing, and nightmarish lighting was commonly used by Jackie Shemesh
throughout. Barndoors were fixed onto the front of the stage lights to shape
the lighting precisely with Balogun looking like he was claustrophobically
boxed in. A literal prison and a metaphorical one as a result of restrictions
on civil liberties. In Delroy’s case, it wasn’t just Coronavirus restricting
what he could and couldn’t do. Whenever Delroy quoted the words of another
character, the lighting would switch cleanly to punctuate the change in speaker
- this gave the production momentum.
In
conclusion: “Death of England: Delroy” was a timely, politically-fueled, and vital
play. The text had the right balance of factual and emotional language with
plenty of honesty and self-reflection. To quote Eckhart
Tolle: “To reduce the aliveness of
another human being to a concept is already a form of violence”. Black lives still matter.
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