Torn

Published Thursday 3 July 2008 at 16:15 by Dominic Martin

The success of Femi Oguns first play lies partly with his script, with its witty, naturalistic dialogue and sharply drawn characters, but mainly with its skilled, passionate cast, who combine to energise the production, forcing it up a gear.

On the surface, Torn is a tragic love story, but its underlying theme is that of deep-seated divisions within the British black community, specifically that between Africans and West Indians. Members of each group stereotype the other, Africans seen as corrupt, arrogant and historically implicit in the slave trade, West Indians as crack-dealing gangsters with no regard for tradition or family values.

The bond between two young lovers, David and Natasha - he from a Nigerian family, she with a Jamaican background - is challenged to breaking point, as their respective families show utter disgust at their choice of partner. Oguns and Kelle Bryan together create a convincing, heartfelt relationship, for whose future the audience feels concern.

As the voices of unreason either side of them, Jocelyn Jee Esien (as David’s older sister Kemi) and Wil Johnson (Natasha’s widower father) are pivotal as the angry, colliding loggerheads, crushing the pair with their obsessive intolerance - the anger the two demonstrate is intimidating.

There is a wondrous ease with which the cast members interact, as each individual character is clearly sketched through accomplished performances and their relationships starkly delineated. Side characters are essentially ciphers via which personal bigotry is revealed, though they are performed expertly, the actors fleshing them out into three dimensions - Antonia Okonma, Kwaku Ankomah and Michelle Asante stand out particularly in this respect.

The in-the-round setting is used productively, the spare lighting and sound clever in its subtle changing of moods.

Whilst Torn is not the most original idea, and despite itself coming suspiciously close to stereotyping certain characters, it ultimately succeeds with the convincing intensity of the performance.