Drum at Underbelly Cowgate – Edinburgh Fringe review

Two Ghanaian legends – photographer James Barnor and the BBC’s former radio broadcaster Mike Eghan – come face-to-face in Jacob Roberts-Mensah’s neat one-act play, first seen at London’s Omnibus Theatre in 2022 and now picking up the prestigious Untapped Award to support fantastic work heading to the Edinburgh Fringe.

The premise is a simple one: it’s the 1960s, and Barnor (played by Josh Roberts-Mensah) has arrived at London’s BBC towers to photograph Eghan (King Boateng) in action for Black magazine Drum. The first Black presenter on the BBC, Eghan is broadcasting music originating from African diasporic communities to the nation – providing exciting, innovative and novel tunes on typically conservative radio waves. But Barnor is slightly less enthusiastic.

Roberts-Mensah has chosen a fantastic period of history in which to set his play– right at the heart of post-colonial decline, where cultural phenomena, like music, played a huge role in defining a newly independent nation’s identity.

Barnor and Eghan butt heads over many things: their perspectives regarding living in the United Kingdom, their responses to Ghanaian independence and political turmoil, and what true national autonomy actually means. Their home nation is in flux – the concept of a “homeland” a moving target.

 A protracted first half of the play takes a while to neatly lay out context and perspective, while the production only reaches more audacious, ambitious moments later on. Here, director Sarah Amankwah allows natural to give way to almost anachronistic wonder – the legacies of these two men burst out into the theatre with wonderful technicolour.

Roberts-Mensah is a fantastic playwright, capable of painting characters with rich, multi-faceted hues. Drum is an unfussy debate-play with a lot to say, and leaving even more for the audience to chew on.

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