It is hard to define this arresting drama. It is a play that might also be a dance with words or a psychological musical. Whatever it is, movement is key to a show that is remarkable for its emotional punch, gut-wrenching performances and formal invention – even if it is sometimes opaque and leaves loose threads.
Written, choreographed and directed by Lanre Malaolu, it is in the same vein as Ryan Calais Cameron’s For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy, whose first productionwas staged at around the same time that Malaolu created Samskara, also fusing dance with dialogue to explore 21st-century Black masculinity.
This is the second in the trilogy that Samskara began, continuing its reflections on Black brotherhood, and this time literally featuring brothers. We find Kieron (Oliver Alvin-Wilson) and Dayo (Nnabiko Ejimofor) mourning a third, recently deceased brother, Adeyeye (Tendai Humphrey Sitima). The first to emerge on stage, Adeyeye, watches over them. He is sometimes central to reconstructed flashbacks but otherwise weaving around them as they battle against their grief or sink into its depths. Kieron, the outcast of the family, resents his positioning but regrets certain actions from his past. Dayo is more vulnerable, more open to his grief, and begrudged by Kieron for it.
The brothers never feature in the funeral gathering itself but next door, so that, as in Abigail’s Party, we hear its music and learn of the family drama taking place inside. Ryan Day’s lighting brilliantly evokes changes in time and place, sometimes creating spectral hues within the stage’s black depths, along with luminous colour when we return to playful memories. A coffin-like box filled with water sits on one side of the stage but is central to Ingrid Hu’s scenography – an unsettling image with hints of purification. Water as a whole is key and comes to seem baptismal.
Movement denotes these changes of era, too, with a past that seems to be wrenching the brothers back physically, played out in slow motion, expressionist anguish or an emotional interweaving between them. Occasionally, these interludes feel overplayed, perhaps even self-indulgent, but they are deftly done.
The actors are striking for their physicality (Ejimofor, who was also in Black Boys …, is an especially strong dancer) and plumb their characters’ despair. The performances are intense without becoming overwrought. Alongside the darkness, there is a great amount of lightness, comedy and laughter. Songs by Stormzy, Burna Boy and Usher are used to good effect. Joyful brotherhood is captured and the ending feels ritualistic in its forgiveness, and healing.