Eek, they’ve gone and lost the plot!
ear for eye (Royal Court Theatre) Verdict: Impenetrable ★✩✩✩✩
PLAYWRIGHT debbie tucker green is that one whose sense of egalitarianism is so delicate that she dislikes capital letters.
All words are equal, please. Alas, the Royal Court’s neonlit billboard, a celebrated feature of London’s Sloane Square, does not do lowercase letters. Her name and the title of her latest play are up in lights in enormous capitals. eek!
That’s about the only merriment to be had in this grindingly dense show. What a thicket of intellectualised victim politics we have. It has three parts played over 150 minutes, without interval. Once in, you are trapped. Take a pillow.
The first part consists of 12 scenes, some in America, some in Britain. Cast members not taking part in a scene will linger at the back of the bare stage, as though at a bus stop.
Numerous lines consist of one word — eg ‘belligerent’, ‘confrontational’, ‘footprints’. Two scenes are high-flown female monologues, free verse conveying bleak exploitation.
The first of these lost me completely. Might as well have been in Mongolian. The second describes a U.S. civil riot and is spoken with vigour by Kayla Meikle.
There is no plot but we do see a young American (Tosin Cole) talking to an adult (Nicholas Pinnock).
Concentrate hard and you will gather the youngster is boiling with racial discontent. He wants change and intends to use his hands. I did not hear him endorse violence but you would not want to catch his eye in the street.
Part two is a wordy joust between a white man (Demetri Goritsas) and a younger black woman ( Lashana Lynch). He may be a psychiatrist or teacher and is a controlling hypocrite. They are debating the motivation of a multiple racist killer.
Part three is a series of filmed readings, all by white people, of race laws in 20thcentury America and British Jamaica pre-1830. One of the white actors is a child with Down’s syndrome.
Is green arguing for violence to balance past racial cruelties? I don’t think she goes quite that far. But this gluey, overly cryptic show has a nasty tang of negativity.