The Blacks, Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London<br/>Alex, Arts, London<br/>Water, Lyric Hammersmith, London
Jean Genet gets a dose of hip hop and unresolved rage
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Your support makes all the difference.In Jean Genet's disturbing drama The Blacks, a bishop, a scarlet-robed judge, a brocaded and bigoted military imperialist and the Queen step forward, one by one, to be shot in the head. They are succumbing to an angry and sardonic mob. All the executed characters are whites, all their executioners black. You might wonder, at least fleetingly, if this production isn't inciting racial hatred – black-against-white or vice versa.
It is not comfortable viewing. Genet was a radical provocateur. Born in 1910, he was white but one of French society's underdogs and outsiders. The abandoned child of a prostitute, he endured a rough ride in care, took to crime, served time and, it's said, felt instantly drawn to the Arab world when – having joined the army – he was sent to the Middle East.
Stratford East's revival is described as The Blacks: Remixed with hip hop numbers, jointly staged by the DJ/composer Excalibah and the set designer-turned-director Ultz. Genet's smug white characters are initially ensconced on a raised dais, as if at some royal command performance with a hint of courtroom trial. Under their supercilious noses, a black troupe performs a menacing play wherein they have seemingly murdered a white woman and are lining up more victims of the same stock.
Written in 1958, this is a charged, sociopolitical revenge drama. This revival is a forthright expression of unresolved black anger, timed to coincide with other productions commemorating the official end of British involvement in the slave trade. "APOLOGISE" flashes on a screen as the Queen and co. parade past. There is also a palpable connection between Genet's work and some of today's aggressive rap lyrics. In one song, the rhyming couplets revile pale skin likening its colour to TB and being cowardly, spit and bird shit, cataracts and anthrax.
I do think this production is valuably honest in voicing rage. It may be cathartic. The depicted race relations are also complicated because (as Genet specified) the whole cast is black. The white skin is pretend, using face-paints and masks. The course of action taken is not entirely condoned or po-faced either. Tameka Empson is hilarious as the bespangled, purse-lipped and waddling Queen, looking frightfully like Elizabeth II.
However, the bottom line is that this is not a mature piece. It sends out a depressing, divisive message and contrives to be garbled at the same time. The directing is inept and the acting uneven. Much shouting is combined with over-amplification and the set's cobbled-together platforms just look shoddy. So, ultimately, The Blacks is given an airing that should provoke debate but isn't a truly powerful piece of theatre.
As for Alex, many will have had high hopes for this multimedia production, directed by Phelim McDermott (of Shockheaded Peter renown). The idea is to unite the plummy actor, Robert Bathurst, with animations, thus bringing the titular strip-cartoon character to life. The end result, alas, is leaden. The smug but flailing investment banker (familiar from the Independent of yore and now the Telegraph) gets fleshed out, for sure. Yet Bathurst just looks stiff and awkward trying to interact with a bunch of screens.
The artwork by Charles Peattie is fine, per se, with pulsating doodles of Alex's City office and Glyndebourne, his fuming boss and fed-up wife. Nonetheless, sticking to monochrome is drab. The script is feeble, Bathurst hardly bothers to do funny voices for the other characters, and the games McDermott plays with projections and solid props are unsophisticated. Big disappointment.
Catch Water instead. Being indebted to Complicite, Robert Lepage, Katie Mitchell and others, doesn't stop this being an impressively intelligent and sensitive piece, devised by the young experimental troupe Filter and director David Farr. Spanning decades and continents, the story interweaves the lives of lonely souls: riven couples; fathers and sons; a DJ and his half-brother; an ecologically concerned marine biologist; a fraught G8 negotiator, and a life-risking diver. Four performers switch roles mercurially. Combining the hi- and lo-tech pleasingly, they also supply all the sound effects, from rain plinking through a leaking roof to airport announcements. Meanwhile, global meltdown and political struggles are delicately meshed with personal griefs – people slowly, quietly drowning in stress and sorrows. Recommended.
'The Blacks' (020 8534 7374) to 10 Nov; 'Alex' (0870 534 4444) to 8 Dec; 'Water' (0870 050 0511) to 3 Nov
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