Contradictions (Manchester)

Ali Gadema is the writer and performer of this one person fifty minute exploration of disaffected youth and hip hop culture. It is the story of three young friends: Ali, Dex and Rob. We see how their shared experience of growing up forges a strong bond which leads through casual drug use to street robbery and subsequent tragedy.

The piece is clearly autobiographical. Ali describes himself as half libyan and half English. He was bullied when young and this lead in turn to his becoming violent and aggressive. However his unexpected link with the Contact Theatre enabled him to turn his life around and resulted in a career as an actor and poet. He now leads workshops with troubled young people and uses his experience to make a strong connection with them.

In a tour de force performance Ali plays a total of seven characters. This often involves him having a conversation as alternate characters and delineating this change by the clever use of the hood on his jacket which he manages to don and doff with great skill. His comic timing is also very good. This reviewer’s favourite character is the black bus driver with the revolutionary outlook who declares in full patois that Beethoven is black didn’t you know?

There are many different theatrical techniques employed. Ali invites audience participation in one rap sequence and the young theatre goers in the packed Contact Theatre Second Space lapped this up with relish. Ali beat boxes and also uses shadow puppets behind a light box in the centre of the stage. This is very wittily realised with a range of further characters displayed. The light box is also used to project films at certain moments of high impact.

Ali shows how the young friends watch violent movies such as Robo Cop and this leads them on to the hardcore hip hop of the Wu Tan Clan.

It is perhaps not surprising to see the development into street violence which is graphically portrayed. This includes one particularly shocking unprovoked homophobic attack which is very unsettling in its passion. The Contact gave out some campaign literature after the show from the anti homophobic violence organisation the Lesbian and Gay Foundation.

The set is pretty sparse. An office desk chair serves as the bus driver’s seat. There is a mock up of two more bus seats which are used in differing permutations throughout the piece.

There is strong language throughout the piece but it is handled with much wit and this softens the blow. There is also much inuendo but this is perfectly in keeping with the machismo which Ali Gadema is exploring in the play. His powerful stage presence permitted him to be as daring as he is in this production.

The play ends rather abruptly with the death of one of the central characters and this took the audience by surprise as was surely the intention.

After the performance there was a playful feedback theatre session lead by The Contact’s Artistic Director Baba Israel. This featured some other young Contact performers portraying in movement and speech the audience’s reactions to the piece as filtered by Israel. It was a clever coda to a challenging and powerful but rewarding evening in the Contact Theatre.

– Andrew Edwards (Reviewed at The Contact Theatre in Manchester)