J’Ouvert review, Harold Pinter Theatre: A beautifully rendered love letter to Notting Hill Carnival

Remounted as part of Sonia Friedman’s Re:Emerge season, Yasmin Joseph’s debut play is a technicolour odyssey

Sapphire Joy and Gabrielle Brooks in ‘J’Ouvert' (Helen Murray)

You can almost feel the August heat rising off the pavement in J’Ouvert. Originally performed at Theatre 503 in 2019 and remounted as part of Sonia Friedman’s Re:Emerge season, Yasmin Joseph’s debut play, a beautifully rendered love letter to Notting Hill Carnival, is a kinetic, strikingly confident piece of work that also happens to be the most “live” that live theatre has felt since its return.

Nadine (Gabrielle Brooks) has been practising her routine for weeks: her eyes are set on becoming “the face of the fete” and winning an all-inclusive holiday to St Lucia – if she can shake off her anxiety. She is aided by the spirit of Claudia Jones, the founder of Notting Hill Carnival, who cajoles and encourages her during various ghostly intervals. Helping, too, is her best friend Jade (Sapphire Joy), a nascent political activist whose burgeoning friendship with the posh, well-intentioned (if obnoxious) founder of grassroots group West London Rising, Nisha (Annice Bopari), threatens her and Nadine’s long-standing friendship.

Joseph’s play is composed like a technicolour odyssey, with Jade and Nadine weaving their way through west London over the course of a single day. They bump into an array of characters, from a couple of amiable “seen it all before” Caribbean elders who reminisce about the early days of Carnival, to the silent Notting Hill residents who watch with baleful suspicion from behind their boarded up townhouse windows. It is not a purely jubilant piece of work – J’Ouvert is set in summer 2017, and the raw grief and anger surrounding the Grenfell Tower fire hangs over the festivities, and over Jade in particular. Though it is never named directly, Joseph suggests its impact through some of the conversations these women have: can these pockets of celebration be considered revolutionary, or is the path forward purely rooted in civic organisation?

Carnival is a shifting kaleidoscope, and while the two young black women find joy and safety in it (something that the exuberant movement direction of Shelley Maxwell excels in drawing out), the space also reminds them that their boundaries are always being encroached upon, whether that be from a heavier police presence on the streets, increasing commercialisation of Carnival itself, or the leering men who ask them, “How you gonna leave your house dressed like that and expect man not to trouble you?”

Rebekah Murrell’s production is fluid and melodious, and it is testament to Brooks and Joy that their relationship feels as authentic as it does. Sandra Falase’s design is wonderful, too, with the women’s vivid, bejewelled costumes quivering with every step they take. There are moments that strain a little at the seams – the play is backended with events that topple like dominos in comparison to the more relaxed, winding first half with the inevitable arguments and recriminations between the trio feeling slightly overcooked.

And yet, those moments are easy to forgive when the energy in the room is as infectious, as irresistible as this. J’Ouvert is a rhapsodic piece of work, and a real joy to see.