Gone Too Far!

Published Wednesday 7 February 2007 at 15:55 by Gerald Berkowitz

Opening the Royal Court’s annual Young Writers Festival, this first play by Bola Agbaje explores the conflicts and identity confusions among adolescent black Britons.

A young Nigerian comes to Britain to join the brother raised here, and the culture clash between the two expands to awaken conflicts among their cohort, between Africans and Caribbeans, light-skinned and dark, boys and girls, and those who embrace their roots and those who hold them in contempt.

The strengths of the play lie in the undeniable authenticity of its voice and in its insights into the shifting power politics of an edgy and violence-prone adolescent society. Its weaknesses, which do not seriously damage it, are those almost inevitable in a beginning writer. Sometimes it is a little too obvious that a scene has been manipulated to set up an argument or debate on one of the play’s issues, and the otherwise barely articulate characters occasionally speak a little too formally when the author wants to spell out one of her themes. She also loses sight of the brothers for a long stretch as the play’s focus wanders to the most high-strung and belligerent of the local girls.

Tunji Lucas as the newcomer with a strong sense of his identity but out of his element and Tobi Bakare as the street-smart but rootless brother anchor the play in a specific and involving human story. In director Bijan Sheibani’s strong supporting cast, Zawe Ashton makes it clear that a lack of self-definition underlies her character’s belligerence, while Marcus Onilude shows that the calmest and most centred of the youths is the one with the strongest sense of who he is.