Haunted by the ghosts of slavery
MOST new American plays I’ve seen recently are more concerned with falling in line with political correctness than breaking new ground.
This is emphatically not the case in Tanya Barfield’s visceral, thoughtful, humorous and elegiac drama about what it means to be a black man in modern America.
Her story from 2006 is about a middleaged mathematician called Lewis whose white wife leaves him after 25 years of marriage. Played by Ray Fearon in exceptional form, Lewis is desperate to forget his ethnicity.
But to make sure this doesn’t happen, Fehinti Balogun plays a variety of ghosts reminding Lewis of the scars slavery has left on him and his family. The extraordinary thing about Balogun is that for all the pain and horror he reports, his dead characters brim with life.
Nor does Barfield shy away from whopping themes in a play that questions the existence of time, challenges the efficacy of political engagement and asks whether freedom even exists — all in just 90 minutes.
On the question of race, she asks whether her characters are black because of their genes, their history or because people see them that way.
And the blue door of the title refers to a ritual of self-protection, keeping good spirits in and bad spirits out.
But the really remarkable thing is that Barfield’s play, and Eleanor Rhode’s production, skip effortlessly through these heavyweight matters. Madeleine Girling’s set is little more than wood chippings, an overhead light bulb and a dark, imprisoning forest of trees. On this, Fearon embodies the academic with remarkable intensity as he grapples with his conscience on a journey through rage, self-loathing and pathos, before eventually finding some peace. Balogun, meanwhile, leads Lewis into a personal purgatory, transfixing us with myriad characters including a greatgrandfather whose mother and wife are sold at auction on the shocking whim of their owners. Amazingly, he turns his role into a kind of cabaret act, often singing the blues and dancing, face split by a broad smile. What could be simply unbearable in its horror, and recriminatory in its tone, is moving, thoughtful, humorous and spellbinding.