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Review Round-up: Critics Share Kwei-Armah Regret

The final instalment in actor-playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah National Theatre triptych about life in modern black Briton, Statement of Regret, received its world premiere last night (14 November 2007, previews from 1 November) at the NT Cottesloe, where Fix Up and the award-winning Elmina's Kitchen preceded it in 2004 and 2003 (See News, 4 Sep 2007).

In Statement of Regret, Kwaku Mackenzie, the founder of a black policy think tank, hits the bottle after his father’s death. When, in a vain attempt to regain influence, he publicly champions divisions within the black community, the consequences are shattering. Should black Britons have solidarity – or not?

Elmina's Kitchen won the 2003 Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright and in 2005 it transferred to the Garrick Theatre, where Kwei-Armah (well known to TV fans from Casualty) took over the starring role and it became the first play by a black Briton in the West End.

In Statement of Regret, Don Warrington, who played Kwei-Armah’s feckless father in Elmina's Kitchen, stars as Kwaku Mackenzie. Also in the cast are Angel Coulby, Oscar James, Trevor Laird, Colin McFarlane, Chu Omambala, Javone Prince, Clifford Samuel and Ellen Thomas. The production is directed by Jeremy Herrin (who had a hit earlier this year at the Royal Court with Polly Stenham’s That Face) and designed by Mike Britton. It continues in rep until 6 February 2008.

Inevitably, Statement of Regret caused critics to recall Kwei-Armah’s earlier instalments in his triptych – as well as Roy Williams’ new play on a similar theme – and, for most, the new piece was found wanting in comparison. (With the exception of the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer, who declared that Kwei-Armah “is back in blazing form”.) Though all admitted that Kwei-Armah’s ideas were ambitious, most felt that, in terms of presentation, they did not work dramatically. Nevertheless, there was widespread praise for Don Warrington’s “Lear-like” performance as Kwaku.

Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (two stars) – “Four years ago, in his fine play Elmina's Kitchen, Kwei-Armah transmitted a prophetic warning about the state of black-on-black relations in an impoverished tranche of down-at-heel London where drugs, violence and sons without salient father-figures are caught in fatal combination. A similar sense of concern animates the far more ambitious Statement of Regret. Yet great aspirations prove Kwei-Armah's undoing as a playwright. In his latest play he tries to show how black people's experience of trauma, through centuries of slavery, segregation and torture has contributed to the disturbed mindsets of their present-day heirs. He owes this fascinating notion to Joy DeGruy Leary, author of Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome, who articulates the theory far more persuasively than Kwei-Armah dramatises it in windily aimless, tear-jerking plots and sub-plots that are left hanging … Director Jeremy Herrin's production, notable for its acting, particularly Javone Prince's angry young man, revels over-much in Kwaku's melodramatic decline and fall which belongs to an old-style theatre of tears.”

- by Terri Paddock

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