Review: THE LONELY LONDONERS, Jermyn Street Theatre

“The city has eyes and it watches your every move.” There’s no time for welcomes for newly arrived Trinidadian immigrant Galahad. Only warnings from street-smart fellow immigrant Moses. The latter has taken the former under his wing; together they will traverse the twisting streets and interminable bustle of 1950s London.

The power of Roy Williams’ adaption of Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners doesn’t lie in its atmosphere, nor in the way it maps the brutal geography of the city and it’s punishing appetite that can swallow down-and-outs whole. Moses and his motley crew of Trinidadian immigrants are the beating core. The shared warmth generated from their tight knit camaraderie keeps the cold outside of their cramped Bayswater flat.

They hustle for work, chase after women, and hunt pigeons in parks to cook for dinner. But banter sours to tantalising anger at the flick of a switch as the tribulations of city life sink its teeth into each of them; job hunting is an endless cycle of pain exacerbated by racism and paranoia. Home couldn’t be further away.

Gamba Cole tenderly leads the ensemble as the brotherly Moses. Thoughts whir behind his restless eyes, a cocked eyebrow shoots up when a lightbulb lights up inside his head. Romario Simpson’s sprightly Galahad, named for his nobility (or naivety), is charged and drained in equal measure by the dynamism of city life. By the end his limbs sag, burdened with anxious exhaustion.

Tobi Bakare’s Lewis is particularly heartstring-tugging. His body is gripped with tension; unable to process the paranoia, his fragile masculinity crumbles along with his spirit; he comes to tragically suspect his loving wife Agnes (graciously played by Shannon Hayes) of infidelity.

Stand offs with racist locals are filtered through the lenses of the victims. Williams fluently pens explosive monologues to maintain the focus of their emotional turbulence. Ebenezer Bamgboye’s lucid directorial vision sharpens that focus by shirking the temptation to make the production period specific.

There’s no set, just a handful of chests that actors perch on at the back of the intimate stage when not in a scene. It conjures a dreamlike psychology; they hover at the back waiting to emerge from the dark. Maybe it’s more nightmarish. Grids of lights bubble and flash between scenes, the dizzying city sucking them into an endless electric whirl.

It’s not perfect. The sometimes tacky physical theatre sequences struggle to integrate with the rest of the drama. But there’s something unspeakably special about a play that maps London’s terrible beauty, only to leave the theatre and step out into it all again.

The Lonely Londoners plays at Jermyn Street Theatre until 6 April

Photo Credit: Alex Brenner

 

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