This new play by Antoinette Nwandu received a good review in the FT and so I made a booking. I was surprised at how easy it was to get a ticket and how many empty seats there were on the night. This seemed a shame as it is a very interesting play, excellently acted and staged.
The two central characters, Moses (Paapa Essiedu) and Kitch (Gershwyn Eustache jnr) spend the days and nights sparring with each other in a way that feels endlessly repetitive - the playwright makes clear its roots in Becket's Godot. The focus of their attention is the Police (po-pos) who pick upon and humiliate black men like them. Their day is interrupted by the arrival of Mister - a white preppy young man who has lost his way to his mother. There follows an interchange punctuated by misunderstandings (e.g., the young man's name is Master), after which he departs.The same actor re-appears as a policeman (ossifer) and the play proceeds to it's grim conclusion with the re-appearnce of Mister who denies all knowledge of encountering the two men earlier, draws a gun and shoots Moses dead.
This was a sobering 80 minutes, brilliantly acted and I ended up buying the text to re-visit some of the subtleties I felt I had probably missed along the way.
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