Michael Buffong’s production is solid rather than showy, but it hits all the emotional beats of the play and draws out its warmth...This is really a promising debut, a compassionate play about a family coming to terms with its past – and its future.
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Oddly enough, the classic family drama has become increasingly hard to come by in post-pandemic London theatre. Sian Carter’s debut play, developed and co-produced by Talawa Theatre, steps into that gap in the market with relish.
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This is quite a debut from playwright Sian Carter, a beautifully observed drama about a British-Jamaican family struggling to face up to tragedy, that effortlessly fills the Lyric Hammersmith’s venerable stage.
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It’s not perfect: the plotting is schematic at the beginning and end, and in the flagged-up crisis that ends the first half. Some of the dialogue lacks finesse. But no wonder Talawa Theatre’s Michael Buffong chose to nurture and direct it, or that Lyric boss Rachel O’Riordan put it on her theatre’s main stage. Structural flaws aside, this is an extraordinarily assured debut.
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Directed by Michael Buffong, its pace is initially slow but it finds its feet in the second half and there are some incredibly poignant scenes...this is a potent piece of theatre which, curiously, also has the episodic pace and rhythm of a TV drama.
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This hugely promising debut play by Sian Carter depicts three generations of a Jamaican-British family finding their way through grief, guilt and mental health problems.
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Like its characters, this is a flawed and messy play, yet in its compassionate exploration of a family learning to see itself clearly finds the sweet spot between despair and hope.
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