Roy Williams, author of Death of England, writes about what it is like to be Black and British and wonders what being Black British means?
The characters in his latest play are the children of the Windrush generation and spread over three generations. The Fellowship is set in contemporary London.
Two sisters grew up in the 1980s when they were activists. Decades later, and now in their fifties, they are at loggerheads.
Dawn (Cherrelle Skeete) is looking after her dying mother and doesn’t like the white girl her teenage son is going out with. Her partner plays the saxophone. He once had a fling with her sister, Marcia (Suzette Lewellyn), who is a high-flying lawyer having an affair with a white married politician and they have just been involved in a car crash whilst he was drunk.
The set has a grand sweeping staircase and looks striking but seems to be a setting more appropriate for an elegant and artificial aristocratic comedy.
Skeete took over the role of Dawn at very short notice and she still has the script in her hand but she only rarely looks at it. The performance is a tour de force. She dances to pop music and has a hilarious monologue rant, which she delivers like a show-stopping number.
Paulette Randall directs and allows the actors to holler far too much.
At one stage, the audience presuming the play was over, clapped enthusiastically, only to find it was not over at all and that there was still much more to come. The play lasts 2 hours 45 minutes which is far too long. The final curtain should be where the audience thought it was.
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