They Drink It in the Congo
Playwright: Adam Brace Director: Michael Longhurst
Almeida, London N1 (020-7359 4404) Until 1 October
Running time: 2hrs 40mins (including interval)
Adam Brace’s dense, witty and “sharp-toothed” satire about white guilt and Africa “begins with a provocation, warning, apology and knowing wink, all rolled into one”, said Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. “White words from black mouths,” complains a Congolese character called Anne-marie. “That’s what this event is. And it has no value.” She isn’t talking about They Drink It in the
Congo; she’s referring to the fictional London festival of Congolese culture organised by Stef (Fiona Button), a young, white Cambridge graduate, which drives the plot of Brace’s play. What value then, one is led to ask, has a drama “written by a white British man about a white British woman” who wants to do her bit for the Democratic Republic of Congo?
Plenty, as it turns out, said Paul Taylor in The Independent. In this “stimulating” and “often very funny play” – in which high-minded politics rub up against Um Bongo jokes – we watch as Stef, the daughter of a white Kenyan farmer, struggles to manage conflicts within London’s Congolese diaspora. There are defections, and even death threats from Les Combattants de Londres, a militant anti-government group that blames Britain for colluding in the exploitation of Congo’s mineral wealth. Clearly, Brace’s play and the fictional festival have similar aims: to explore the plight of the DRC. “The difference is that the play takes on board the ‘white lens’ difficulties” involved – the difficulties of presumption, authenticity, and so on – and “wrestles with them with exuberance and humour”.
Richard Goulding is “delightfully” funny as Stef’s ex-boyfriend Tony, a gauche PR man, said Christopher Hart in The Sunday Times. There’s also an enjoyably “tasty caricature of a ghastly African-american poet”, and Michael Longhurst’s direction is “visually rich and fluid”. But at nearly three hours, this “long and sprawling” evening doesn’t quite sustain its promise. As the overspill of Congo’s poisonous politics overwhelms Stef’s plans, an “initially complex and fast-moving story drifts into bitty and uninvolving scenes of bickering” in which real dramatic tension is thin on the ground.