Kwame’s return to these shores is full of brightness and warmth
Is Kwame Kwei-armah the man to give British theatre a vital multicultural shot in the arm? Last night the one-time actor – who became a familiar face as paramedic Finlay Newton on Casualty in the early Noughties, and then transformed his career by concentrating on playwriting and directing – officially ushered in a new era at the Young Vic, one of London’s artistic powerhouses.
If he gets things right running the show here, he could be the one to follow Rufus Norris into the top job at the National in the future.
The charismatic 51-year-old – known by many simply as “Kwame” (his adopted Ghanaian name) – has been away from our shores for the past seven years, honing his producing skills running the Center Stage theatre in Baltimore. So it feels apt that he should mark his homecoming and kick-off his regime with an evergreen gender-bending Shakespearean comedy that has at its heart the epic challenge of reinventing yourself.
His predecessor David Lan presided over a golden age, with famous actors and talented directors flocking to the smartly renovated, insistently experimental venue. Daunting stuff. But like Shakespeare’s shipwrecked, grief-wracked heroine, Viola, who finds what she’s made of under duress, Kwei-armah has decided to go with his instincts.
So this musical adaptation of
Twelfth Night, with music and lyrics by Shaina Taub – first seen in Central Park under the auspices of the Public Theater in New York in 2016 (the Public’s Oskar Eustis is credited as co-director) – is a breezy statement of intent. Is it achingly hip? Not at all. Its basic hallmarks are brightness, generosity and warmth in abundance.
The Illyrian action has been relocated to modern-day Notting Hill, festooned with flag bunting and fairy-lights; we’re in one of those posh streets so beloved of tourists and Richard Curtis. Don’t ask how Gabrielle Brooks’s wonderfully expressive Viola has got here. In fact, throughout this brief evening it’s best not to probe the concept too hard.
Quite why, for example, a gobetween would be needed when Rupert Young’s lovesick Orsino and Natalie Drew’s aloof Olivia are direct neighbours is one thing; and why everyone gets so coy about their sexual confusion, given that we’re in the run-up to the carnival, emblem of our hedonistic capital, another.
The bigger problem is that Kweiarmah has under-played his own roots in this re-transposition. Scene-setting reggae, steel-drums, pounding bass and jagged grime are glaringly absent from the score. Brooks speaks with a London accent, but sings with an American one. Shouldn’t the big fight here involve knives rather than fencing foils? A suggestive swirl of pot smoke wouldn’t go amiss too.
Yet it finally feels beside the point to notice the lack of realism or that in lopping much of the original, including its songs, the emphasis has swung from “the rain it raineth every day” melancholy to overly sun-kissed comedy. The scampering pace keeps the audience on its toes mentally, while the music references everything from Gershwin to Beyoncé.
Gerard Carey steals the show as Malvolio, an incongruous Downtonesque figure of haughty rectitude, who magics the mock love-letter from his mistress into a dancing cane and then goes into a gleeful tap-routine (augmented by members of a local community ensemble). There’s also fine support from Martyn Ellis as a corpulent, beret-wearing Belch and Melissa Allan as a tartan-trousered Scottish Feste. This show won’t change anyone’s life – but, with a big-finale shower of confetti strewing the auditorium, it affirms a change of management. Prepare to be Kwame-d.