Not Your Superwoman with Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright at Bush Theatre – review

This play by Emma Dennis-Edwards marks Lynette Linton’s last hurrah at the Bush Theatre, which she has transformed over six years into a brilliant beacon of new writing and powerful energy.

Not Your Superwoman shares many of the qualities of her previous hits, such as Shifters (which she directed) and Red Pitch (which she commissioned), in that it shines a light on under-explored themes. In this case, it’s the matriarchal relationships learnt down generations that have formed a Black woman and her daughter.

It also features two outstanding performances from Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton) and Letitia Wright (best known for Marvel’s Black Panther), as Joyce and Erica, mother and daughter, who return to Guyana to scatter the ashes of Elaine, their mother and grandmother, who came to the UK in the 1980s and never returned.

The early scenes crackle with energy and humour as the couple, who aren’t really speaking, face the prospect of a long flight. They bond over wanting to watch Michael B Jordan in Sinners (a neat in-joke about Wright’s Black Panther co-star) and argue about Erica’s perpetual tardiness. “She’s not late because she’s Black,” says Joyce, with exasperation. “She’s late because she’s f**king inconsiderate.”

Linton’s tight direction and the detail of the performances keep things fizzing along as the two hit the hotel bar and begin to go sightseeing, grappling with their different aspirations for the trip. Joyce is all down-to-earth, hard-drinking, no-nonsense, wanting to have fun and not think too hard; her daughter is “reassessing” her relationship with alcohol, full of therapeutic learning about her relationship with her mother and a desire to offer libations to the grandmother she nursed through her final illness.

Alex Berry’s set is bare and flexible, with a few hard chairs doing duty for many rooms, and Gino Ricardo Green’s video designs switching the scene from a street market to a London flat, to Guyana’s magnificent Kaieteur Falls. Time is fluid, too. Both Rosheuvel and Wright embody Elaine, as memory floods in, and scenes unfold that begin to explain why each has become the woman she is.

The themes are clear. Elaine has shaped the world her daughter and granddaughter live in. Both Elaine and Joyce have been single mothers and have coped differently with the upbringing of their offspring. Deprived of a university education by poverty and the need to work, Joyce has been determined that Erica will have the luxuries and the benefits she never had; yet Erica resents that decision to put work and money ahead of love and spending time together. Now she, too, is contemplating pregnancy and a future when she will have to decide how to bring up her own child.

Rosheuvel and Wright magnificently convey the uncertainties of their relationship, sometimes literally dancing their feelings, always conscious of one another in the metaphorical dance of their lives. Both are intensely good at revealing the way deep emotion can be hidden under a casual remark, flinching when the other touches a nerve, longing for a warmth that is always withheld. Rosheuvel is extraordinarily funny as the straight-talking Joyce, trying to be tough but incredibly vulnerable; Wright makes Erica’s reliance on her therapy mantras revelatory of the loneliness she feels.

Yet the flashbacks to their respective lives are less convincing – Elaine’s traumatic reasons for arriving in London are explained in an unsatisfactory rush – and the play loses its grip as it tries to cram in too many strands. It’s thanks to the performances that it continues to resound.