Not Black and White - Seize the Day

Synopsis

Three Black playwrights look at the state of Britain at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. The Not Black And White season is sponsored by Bloomberg’s ‘New writing for New audiences’ programme.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 3 November 2009

After Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah is second up in the Tricycle’s black playwrights’ season, “Not Black and White,” and has directed his own lively look at a television celebrity’s bumpy campaign to become London’s first black mayor.

And why not? Over 40% of London’s population is black or Asian and, as somebody says, “Boris has shown you can walk in off the street” and do the job. But the campaign to install the middle-class reality TV star Jeremy Charles (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) is pitted with problems and internecine struggle.

First, his power-broking fixer, Howard Jones (Karl Collins), re-writes his articles in the press and disapproves of his determination to mentor the black hoodlum he faced up to in a street fight that interrupted one of his television broadcasts (the first of several filmed inserts in the action).

And second, he’s falling out of love with his white wife (Amelia Lowdell) and into romantic cahoots with his somewhat under-written lover Susan...

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Latest User Review

karen - 8 November 2009:

Acting and direction excellent.However found play overly didactic which I thought reduced the power of it's message.The one dimensional characters (mind you white wife wasn't even one dimensional!)were just vehicles for an important message so perhaps that aspect didn't matter too much.Raised many questions that were discussed at length in the bar afterwards with racially mixed group....

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