How I Learned to Swim at Summerhall – Edinburgh Fringe Review

Apparently, 95 per cent of Black British adults don’t swim. Which is just one of the many thoughts about the relationship between Black people and water that lies behind this resonant new play by Somebody Jones, which eddies in many directions while never losing its central pull.

It was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Playwrighting and the Alfred Fagon Award and you can see why; it weaves a huge amount of fact and feeling into a monologue by Jamie, a woman who is taking her first swimming lesson at the age of 30.

She has been afraid of water ever since she was plunged into the pool by a nasty nine-year-old in her childhood. But as she faces her own demons after a family tragedy, she discovers more and more about a wider history: about the babies lost overboard in the Transatlantic slave trade, about the myths of water gods and the realities of segregated swimming pools, about the pioneers like Paul Marshall, the only Black swimmer to compete for Great Britain at the Olympics.

All of this is richly expressed in writing that is once poetic and witty. “In a party of nine-year-olds, screams aren’t a sign of danger,” Jamie remarks wryly at one point.

The production by Prentice Productions and Brixton House, which tours widely this autumn, is also perfectly wrought. Designer Debbie Duru sets the monologue on a raised platform, tiled in blue and white, with the handles of a pool ladder at one end. Ali Hunter’s watery blue lighting and Nicola T Chang’s echoing sound design, full of drips and splashes, cleverly convey the feeling of being poolside – or by the ocean, which is where Jamie goes to make her first attempt at swimming alone.

Towards the end, an essentially naturalistic narrative tilts into magical realism and there are jumps in the plot that make Jamie’s actions seem less believable, but the play and the production, sensitively guided by director and dramaturg Emma Jude Harris have by this point established enough goodwill by the sheer depth of their storytelling that they just about pull off this dive into murky waters.

The whole thing is pulled together by a performance of luminous honesty by Frankie Hart, utterly convincing as a clever woman beset by irrational fears and doubts and drawn into dangerous currents by her own grief. It’s a lovely, thoughtful performance in a gently thought-provoking play.