‘HIGH TABLE’ RINGS WITH EMOTIONAL MIX OF JOY AND TRAGEDY
Diversionary Theatre is the first in America to stage British playwright Temi Wilkey’s “The High Table.” It’s an immersive production that fills the University Heights space with percussive sound and, as its story situated in parallel worlds unfolds, both anguish and love.
“The High Table” (the title refers to those who dine with the bride and groom in the Nigerian wedding tradition) is Wilkey’s first play. It was previously produced at the Bush Theatre in London where she resides. As written set in London, the locale for the production at Diversionary has been changed with Wilkey’s permission to San Diego.
But San Diego is only one of three settings in “The High Table.” There’s Lagos, Nigeria, the heritage nation of protagonist Tara and her family. There’s also an ancestral realm which according to Yoruba African cosmology is populated by relatives who have died and are resting, awaiting reincarnation or in this case acting as intermediaries looking down on their descendants.
In this otherworld Yetunde (Monique Gaffney), Babatunde (Grandison Phelps) and Adebisi (Taylor Henderson) wrangle over whether to bless the proposed marriage between Tara (Andrea Agosto) and her fiancée Leah (also played by Henderson).
They’re not the only ones in disagreement. Tara’s traditional parents (portrayed by Gaffney and Phelps in their dual roles) won’t accept a gay marriage for their daughter. Mother Mosun is willing to live with Tara’s earlier revelation of being bisexual, but that’s it. No more.
It’s when the side story of father Segun’s gay brother in Nigeria, Teju (Durwood Murray), is introduced that the tragic consequences of bigotry and intolerance come to the fore. In this second half of the play the stakes are elevated and the impact of what Wilkey, who was in
the audience at Diversionary on opening night, is saying about homophobia, family and colonialism at its most inhumane takes hold.
This might not resonate as it does without Murray’s aching and elegant performance as Teju, whose courage and desperation are in conflict. The revelatory scene in Lagos between him and brother Segun is silencing in its power.
Tara and Leah’s love story, to a great extent its own reflection on what it means to care for someone as they really are, is fraught with many of the complications that all relationships go through, especially when family intrudes. Agosto and Henderson make Tara and Leah relatable in their disconnections and their tenderness.
As for the ancestral world sequences, even with their humorous bickering, dazzling costumes (by Kathie Taylor) and ethereal beauty, at least half of them are lengthier than should be. Moreover, while the ancestors’ machinations are engrained in Yoruba beliefs, the notion that Tara and her family could of their own free will find faith in themselves and each other is worth pondering.
“The High Table,” directed at Diversionary by Niyi Coker Jr., is accompanied throughout by the classical Yoruba drumming of Juan Carlos Blanco and Angelica Cardona. Their contribution to the pulse of this reverberant tale cannot be overestimated.