Review Round-up: Mixed bag for Young Vic’s Feast
On their way to a family dinner, three sisters are divided at a crossroads. From Nigeria in the 1700s through Brazil, Cuba and the USA to London in 2013, the sisters survive by their spirits – spirits of courage, mischief and incredible resilience.
Directed by Rufus Norris, the show is written by five playwrights from across the world; Yunior Garcia Aguilera, Rotimi Babatunde, Marcos Barbosa, Tanya Barfield and Gbolahan Obisesan. Cast includes Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Noma Dumezweni. It runs until 23 February.
Michael Coveney
Whatsonstage.com
★★
Something’s
gone horribly wrong here between the idea of an inspirational Royal
Court and Young Vic co-production project involving five young
playwrights… Rufus Norris‘
production looks good in parts, and has some entertainingly
vaudevillian effects of magic screens, dissolving landscapes (the
designer is Katrina Lindsay),
pelvic-thrusting and bottom-jutting dances (choreography by George
Céspedas) and great costumes, with spectacular straw head-pieces. But
the show is almost impossible to follow… It sounds so simple, but the
writing lacks both strength and subtlety beyond reiterating, almost ad
nauseam… The cast is immensely likeable, and the audience, on the
night I went, wonderfully diverse and, amazingly, enthusiastic…
Fiona Mountford
Evening Standard
★★★
Feast
unashamedly bills itself as an “epic” production and in many ways this
adjective is not hubristic. It’s an all-out, bells-and-whistles show for
the ongoing World Stages London project that aims to encompass West
Africa-originating Yoruba culture and its centuries-long worldwide
diaspora, initially due to the slave trade. It’s less a play and more a
performance experience, in which the design, music and choreography
prove far more accomplished than contributions from an eye-watering five
playwrights from five different countries. There’s really only one
problem: so taken up is the piece with its own admittedly impressive
showmanship that it forgets to tell us very much about Yoruba culture.
Director Rufus Norris whizzes us through stylish snapshots of scenes,
places and times; they are all immaculately designed and choreographed
(lovely work, George Céspedes) but with precious little cumulative
heft… This is certainly a Feast for the senses but one that leaves you
feeling strangely empty soon after.
Michael Billington
Guardian
★★★★
…It
offers a spectacular feast for the eye – but I would be lying if I said
that it achieved a satisfying intellectual coherence… What holds the
evening together is the staggering, kaleidoscopic vivacity of Rufus
Norris’s production, and the vitality of the performances. Videos
projected on to Katrina Lindsay’s mobile string curtain whisk us from
continent to continent with memorable fluidity. Noma Dumezweni, Michelle
Asante and Naana Agyei-Ampadu endow the three sisters with exactly the
right blend of the physical and the spiritual. Ira Mandela Siobhan is
sensational as the dancing trickster too… At the end, the audience went
wild; and, even though I think the case for omnipresent Yoruban values
is only half-proven, no one could deny the show packs a sensuous punch.
Dominic Cavendish
Daily Telegraph
★★★★
…wide-ranging,
free-flowing exploration of the diaspora of the Yoruba people… Strip
away the soulful song and lithe dance, the colourful costumes and
magical video projections that are the chief characteristics of this
show and what have you got? A handful of playlets… that barely yield
more than fleeting impressions of the subject at hand. this theatrically
triumphant affair rustles disparate ingredients (including a live
chicken) into a consistently fascinating, hugely energising experience.
The overall mood itself – of exuberant defiance and continuity in the
face of deracination – is the message, and it’s aimed at the guts not
the head. Yes, the show whets an appetite it doesn’t fully sate. And it
can’t be said you leave immediately the wiser. But greatly the richer?
No question about that at all.
Libby Purves
The Times
★★★★
“A-She!”
cries the shape-shifter Orisha. The audience, warm, young and cheerful,
repeats it, willing to co-operate with anyone so entertainingly
multiform (the director Rufus Norris has, with a rolling screen, just
transformed him again)… Playlets by five writers (for World Stages
London) celebrate rather than rebuke, with music from Sola Akingbola of
Jamiroquai… Brilliant. So is the London 2012 section: a girl athlete
barracked for fraternising with a “pink-toe” coach. But why then, she
asks, do black boys chase white girls? Bridling like a
politically-correct Lady Bracknell, the lad replies: “Revenge!” Her
scorn brings cheers of hilarity. And on we go, through vignettes from
each continent , towards two final and excellent jokes. Generous, wise
glee drums through the show like a human heart. Gotta love it.
