Review - Babul and the Blue Bear
Venue: Contact Theatre
Date Reviewed: 25th September, 2008
Liverpool based 20 Stories High are a dynamic new theatre company keen on breaking down the boundaries between performer and spectator. Formed in 2006 by co-artistic directors Keith Saha and Julia Samuels, 20 Stories collaborate with young adults, allowing them to help shape the content of each project.
Their latest production Babul and the Blue Bear mixes elements of personal testimony, rap, and movement with more traditional theatre elements such as masks and puppetry. Does it work? Well, yes and no.
Benny (Jonny Leigh Wright) comes from a broken home. Mum’s an alcoholic. He’s never met his father. One day Benny finds a video cassette under his mum’s bed featuring a performance by ‘Black Barry’ (Everal A. Walsh), one of that toe curlingly rare breed, a black comedian who tells racist jokes. Instantly, Benny knows the man is his dad. Could things get any worse? When his mother gives him up to Social Services, Benny gets involved in drugs, knives and petty crime. As anyone who’s seen Ross Kemp in the Sky One show Gangs will testify, there’s always someone bigger and harder lurking round the corner.
There’s a lot of good stuff in Babul and director Saha has an interesting take on cultural identity, racial tension and absent parents. The problem is that these issues are not explored in any depth. The script – written by Saha and actors Wright and Walsh - is all over the place. Characters drift in and out of the narrative with no purpose. Key dramatic events are left dangling. Some scenes verge on parody; a masked ‘death’ appears, brandishing a knife - the sort of over-emphatic image which wouldn’t look out of place in the League of Gentleman’s Legs Akimbo!
It seems churlish to criticise a show whose heart is so obviously in the right place, particularly when it’s performed with such energy: Lee Wright’s live rap – improvised from audience suggestions – manages to be edgy and exhilarating (though referencing Dayne Bowers and Another Level is surely breaching the rapper’s code!) and Walsh plays 5 other masked characters with considerable skill.
The play is not without its moving moments either, the final scene for example is surprising and oddly touching.
Ultimately, Babul & the Blue Bear is a bit of a curate’s egg - but an enjoyable one, nonetheless.
-Stephen Timms