Provocative Pulitzer winner’s latest is both funny and unsettling
White Noise Bridge Theatre, London SE1
In White Noise, her most naturalistic work to date, Pulitzer prize-winning Suzan-lori Parks presents a singularly provocative premise. Following a bruising, racially charged encounter with the police during a late-night walk, chronic insomniac and creatively stalled thirtysomething artist Leo (Ken Nwosu) resorts to drastic action. Leo is so traumatised by the incident that instead of getting therapy or suing the police as his white, lawyer girlfriend Dawn (Helena Wilson) urges him to do, he wants his white, independently wealthy buddy Ralph (James Corrigan) to buy him.
Yes, that’s right. Leo, a black man despairing of the system to keep him safe, proposes to enslave himself to Ralph for 40 days and 40 nights because he will “be under the protection of someone who, to the powers that be, is a Big Somebody... I’ll take myself to the lowest place and know forever that, if I can bear it, then I can bear anything.”
The frisson of discomfort caused by this plot twist and its impending disastrous consequences rippled through the audience at the Bridge Theatre (where the play is receiving its London premiere) like a living thing. As Misha (Faith Omole), Ralph’s black girlfriend tells Leo, this is “Afroembellished; pessimism to the max”, but the play is prescient. The spectre of George Floyd haunts it, even though the play premiered at New York’s Public Theatre more than a year before his murder in 2020. In the shift from New York to London, the action now plays out in a shooting range rather than a bowling alley. This raises the stakes – Lizzie Clachan’s design emphasises that guns are sport and black men often the prey.
It’s within the framework of this appalling emotional landscape that Parks tests the degree to which this foursome, and by extension America, has unshackled itself from a legacy of slavery and racism. Initially, Leo and Ralph’s contract feels like a bros-justhaving-a-lark experiment, even as Ralph seems to slip a bit too easily into the role of master. However, as the 40 days spool out, their relationship becomes overlaid with something altogether more insidious. Ralph, formerly the whiny epitome of white male entitlement who was passed over for tenure because of his university’s diversity drive, transforms into a man who, in the play’s most chilling scene, puts a “punishment collar” around his best friend’s neck. Polly Findlay’s direction astutely sets this image in the audience’s mind by having it move slowly backwards into the deep recesses of the Bridge’s cavernous stage, suggesting a move back into history.
This wouldn’t be a Parks play without its dizzying layers of reference. Each character gets a moment in the spotlight with monologues that colour in their backstories. Misha, who was raised by two African-american female academics, compromises herself by performing a cliché of black womanhood on her web-based show, Ask a Black, while Dawn tries way too hard to be a woke, do-gooder lawyer.
Parks, it seems, is positing that we are all complicit in the racial status quo. Her notion of why a black man – insomnia-addled brain or not – would voluntarily enslave himself fails to fully convince. However, its ambitious scope of ideas ensures the play is funny, challenging, audacious and profoundly unsettling. Three hours seldom passed so quickly.
Until Nov 13. Tickets: 0333 320 0052; bridgetheatre.co.uk