Theatre review - Stop and Search
You’d be forgiven for expecting Gabriel Gbadamosi’s play to be about our stop and search
laws, where police notoriously target black people over white. Instead,
Irish-Nigerian Gbadamosi uses a wider lens to explore issues of race in modern-day
Britain.
Divided into three acts, the
first has Tel (Shaun Mason), an abrasive wheeler-dealer, picking up Akim
(Munashe Chirisa), a traumatised African refugee desperate to get to the UK. As
they drive towards the English Channel, we learn that Akim has lost his family
and witnessed unspeakable horrors.
In the middle section, two armed
police officers keep watch over a London house. They are waiting for Tel, their
‘criminal’, to return. Tone (David Kirkbride) reveals a dubious past, riven by
racism, while his ‘good cop’ companion, Lee (Tyler Luke Cunningham), is still
coming to terms with being a black transgender man.
The final part draws the various
threads together. Akim, now a minicab driver, listens to a heartfelt confession
as he drives Bev (Jessye Romeo) to Elephant and Castle.
Hugely topical, Stop and Search explores how prejudice and
distrust of the other has seeped into our everyday lives. However, Gbadamosi’s
finely crafted lyricism, his characters’ unique speech rhythms and ellipses, sometimes
impacts on the play’s dramatic tension.
In Mehmet Ergen’s taut, if
uneven, production the opening scene, in which a white bigot experiences the
power of empathy, is the most memorable.
Originally published by Camden Review