The Daily Telegraph - 06.08.2019

The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 6 August 2019 *** 23

An unmissable look at

the legacy of empire

W

estern tragedy began in

ancient Greece with one

performer conversing with a

chorus. Until the Flood, Dael

Orlandersmith’s beautifully measured

solo tour de force, has a similar essential

quality, one person speaking for many,

a nation of millions, even. Touching

issues of gun violence and racial

tension, it deals with the 2014 slaying of

black teenager Michael Brown at the

hands of a white police officer (Darren

Wilson). It premiered pre-Trump in

2016; landing in the UK the same

weekend as the mass shootings in El

Paso and Dayton, it’s as if it now

channels some of the grief, rage,

confusion and division that has seized

the States with renewed intensity.

Brown’s death – while unarmed –

following a convenience store robbery,

triggered what became known as the

“Ferguson unrest”: the Missouri city he

lived in – part of the sprawling

metropolis of St Louis – was beset by

months of protests and riots.

Orlandersmith, a poet who made her

mark in theatre in the mid-Nineties

with Beauty’s Daughter, another solo

show that saw her switch between

characters to evoke the life of a fictional

African-American woman from

Harlem, went to St Louis in 2015. After

interviewing people there, she evolved

a piece giving voice to eight locals – not

verbatim speech (these are “composite”

characters) but ringing true to life:

confiding, ruminating, direct.

Stalking a stage that resembles a

Touching tour de force

lays bare America’s ills

I

t begins with simple whistling,

imitating birdsong, blending

into actual birdsong. As if we had

landed on the shore ourselves,

we acclimatise to the scene, pick

out details – leaves overhead,

soft light, scampering children, adults

clustered beside a fire.

Their dress and their language mark

them as the Dharug, an Aboriginal

people whose extensive lands were

found in what is known now as

Western Sydney. The year is 1813, 25

years after the arrival of the First Fleet,

which established a penal colony in

Australia. The bushy-bearded eldest of

the clan suddenly sings a song filled

with foreboding. Come the end of The

Secret River – Andrew Bovell adapting

Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel

of 2005 – that scene of idyllic harmony

and community will be gone forever.

And we will be left hearing an

inconsolable lament, repeated as

darkness falls.

Grenville, from Sydney, wrote her

novel after walking across the

Harbour Bridge in 2000 in a

procession aimed at spurring

reconciliation between Australia’s

indigenous and non-indigenous

peoples. Her tale of William Thornhill,

a south London petty thief whose

death sentence has been commuted to

transportation and who claims a lush

stretch of farmable land by the

Hawkesbury river, is a well-researched

fiction. By being transplanted to the

stage (this was the first work

commissioned by Cate Blanchett and

her husband Andrew Upton on taking

over Sydney Theatre Company in

2008) its mythic aspect deepens.

Strangely, almost magically, the

20-strong ensemble drawn together

by director Neil Armfield, comprising

actors of First Nation and European

heritage, come to embody not only

their own characters but all those

different races whose collective lives

and destinies were altered irrevocably

by the mighty cultural collisions of

colonialism. A play about a particular

stretch of time and place acquires a

vast-spanning significance.

The atmosphere is loaded with

tension – as all the wonder, struggle

and gathering animosity of two sets of

forebears, forced to compete for

territory, is reinhabited. There’s no

stinting on the racism of the incomers,

the brazen entitlement to land. Yet the

evening abstains from easy judgment

or political correctness, is rife with

saving moments of comic relief and

common humanity – as strangers

grope to communicate, even reach out

to connect.

Nathaniel Dean’s Thornhill is a gruff

There will be blood: Nathaniel Dean (left) and Shaka Cook star in an adaptation of Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel about a petty thief who is transported to Australia in 1813

Shape-shifter:

Dael Orlandersmith

plays eight different

characters

Until Aug 25.

Tickets: 0131 228

1404; traverse.

co.uk; at the

Arcola, London

E8 (020 7503

1646), Sept 4 to

Sept 28;

arcolatheatre.

com

RYAN BUCHANAN PHOTOGRAPHY

makeshift shrine, the author-actress

begins with reflections that probe the

roots of current ills. A retired black

schoolteacher recalls the climate of

intimidation when she was a girl, “the

sundown law”, the imperative of

keeping your place, which she refused

to do, breaking free for a New York

college education in the Sixties.

Floating through painful

reminiscences, she alights – with a

succinctness typical of this piece – on a

wise observation, linking Brown’s death

with a legacy of inculcated self-hatred.

By contrast, and yet chiming with

those sentiments about self-destructive

urges, we hear from another

septuagenarian – a white one, an ex-cop

who unpicks the welter of split-second

decisions confronting a white police

officer facing a black suspect, with a

crowd gathering: “Every racial thing

that ever happened ... to them that

white man will be on the receiving end

of it all.”

Orlandersmith (directed by Neel

Keller) shape-shifts with subtlety,

donning a jacket here, straddling a

chair there, face crinkling as thoughts

flow to her lips. She bobs about as a

lyrical, angry black street-kid, bows in

sorrow as a white teacher who fell out

with a friend for trying to see both

sides. After we’ve heard from a diligent

black barber unimpressed by victim-

culture liberals, a supremacist white

landowner intent on making Ferguson

“clean, white, purified”, a bookish black

teenager hoping he lives long enough

to get out, and a few more besides, we

get finally what sounds like

Orlandersmith herself. “Black boy

• down/ White man – shoot/ Both
  down/ Both are down/ Both are done,”
  she intones, sadly. Looking across the
  divide, she finds a matching desolation.
  America is at a low ebb, her even-
  handed understanding more
  necessary than ever.

Edinburgh International Festival

The Secret River

King’s Theatre

★★★★★

Dominic Cavendish

THEATRE CRITIC

Edinburgh Fringe

Until the Flood

Traverse Theatre

★★★★★

By Dominic Cavendish

Edinburgh 2019

Chris Martin’s sister shines in

smart confessional about fame

T

he sure-fire way of quickly

drumming up business at the

Fringe is by trading on a famous

name. Write a play about someone

known to millions. Better still, be

related to someone famous. Last year,

everyone got excited about Camilla

Cleese dishing it out about her father,

John. But trumping that for curiosity

value is Superstar, a solo turn by

Nicola Wren, baby sister of 42-year-

old Chris Martin of Coldplay.

The title isn’t a coincidence, it

signals a deliberate broaching of his

remarkable success, their

relationship, what it has been like

growing up in the shadow of one of

the world’s most successful pop

artists. Fans will flock – and given

that, as Wren drily points out, “every

shop, bar and restaurant plays

Coldplay all the time”, even if you’re

the opposite of an aficionado, the

intrigue-factor remains high.

Coldplay admirer that I am (sue me)

but also an ingrained cynic, I attended

this unignorable event with a guilty

spring in my step but also a

counterweight of wariness. I emerged

more entertained and thought-

provoked than I expected to be and

persuaded that, despite her ingrained

advantage, Wren – at 28 – has proven

herself one of the finds of the festival.

She may not become an A-list

celebrity in her own right, but she has

bags of personality, abundant talent

and, yes, star quality.

She says she abstained as long as

she could from using her name as a

stepping stone, adopting a stage-

name to hide the connection

(inspired, daffily, by Pizza Express’s

“La Reine”). Regaling us with natter

primarily at her own expense (though

sometimes at her brother’s: “Let’s be

honest, X&Y – a bit of a stinker”), what

finally spurred her to break cover was

realising that distancing herself from

her eldest (of four) siblings was just

self-defeating. If fame has cost the

family’s boy wonder, it has taken its

toll on her, too, but without the

financial rewards: his ascent

coincided with her formative years,

plainly shaping her sense of self. Time

to confront all that.

Her hour in a dank vault could

easily resemble a dire therapy session,

scented with envy and bitterness. But

even though it’s a frank confessional,

it’s done with winning chirpiness and

a Fleabaggy air of self-irony. With

Wren on the anxious mock-lookout

for VIP latecomers, she takes us

through the cherished highlights of

her “career”, reprising her bushy-

tailed debut as a bunny in an Exeter

village panto, along with her drama-

school audition as a fizzing vitamin

pill and bit-part as a one-eyed

prostitute in the film King Arthur:

Legend of the Sword.

The time Chris arrived to watch her

play Mole, when she was 11, in a local

production of Wind in the Willows,

along with Gwyneth Paltrow (who

would become his wife of 13 years),

inadvertently eclipsing her triumph,

registers like an earthquake. She has

been picking up the pieces ever since,

you feel, but (on the evidence here, at

least) with good grace. A discreet

show, all told, no dirty laundry aired,

yet it feels intimate and revelatory.

Super, really.

Edinburgh Fringe

Superstar

Underbelly, Cowgate

★★★★★

By Dominic Cavendish

Bushy-tailed: Nicola Wren recounts a life

lived in the shadow of her famous brother

KARLA GOWLETT

Until August 25. Tickets: 0131 510 0395;

edfest.com

patriarch whose hopeful vision of the

freedom and prosperity that awaits

now he’s left the mother country isn’t

matched by his dutiful, determined

wife Sal (Georgia Adamson), who

chalks up days like she’s serving a

sentence, and worries for the safety of

their sons. The evening’s dramatic

sophistication lies in showing what

might almost have been – in the

amicable, curiosity-filled encounters

between the womenfolk, and between

the children – and the personal cost to

Thornhill, who initially stands distinct

from his rougher former countrymen,

as the land gets soaked in blood.

Everything flows magnificently

• minimal theatrical suggestion evokes
  maximal horror (handfuls of blown
  dust denoting remorseless gunfire,
  say); music and songs stir comfort but
  serve too as competing war cries. It’s
  unforgettable and, frankly – given our
  ongoing need to look at the legacy of
  empire – unmissable.

Until Aug 11. Tickets: 0131 473 2000; eif.

co.uk; National’s Olivier Theatre, London

SE1 (020 7452 3000), Aug 22-Sept 7

Readers can watch

Glyndebourne Festival

Opera’s new production of

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic

Flute) starring Björn

Bürger (right) for free on

the Telegraph website.

The performance, which

took place on Sunday

night, is now available on

demand until Monday

August 12 at 9.30am.

To watch Die Zauberflöte

(The Magic Flute), please

visit: telegraph.co.uk/

opera/what-to-see/

magic-flute-livestream-

glyndebourne

Wat c h The Magic Flute for free online

rflöte

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k/

eam-

edfest.com

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