The Broke 'n' Beat Collective - Unity Theatre Liverpool - 09/02/2016

In a world where young people are pigeon holed or hold their problems locked away internally, Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective encourages us to think inside the box.

Keith Saha of Liverpool based 20 Stories High and Sue Buckmaster of Theatre Rites have worked together before and Liverpool audiences will remember their work on Melody Loses her Mojo in 2013. Both are committed to helping young people to find a voice through theatre, and here they join forces to explore a collection of issues that are often ignored or misunderstood.

In something that seems to have grown out of a set that Miriam Nabarro designed for Saha’s 2014 ‘Black’, she has now created a world that lives entirely in cardboard boxes, stacked up at the rear of the stage. The cast unfold boxes to reveal scenes from young lives, while out of other boxes emerge puppets and props enabling the stories to be told.

Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective introduce themselves as a band playing a gig, in which each of the numbers they perform recounts a young person’s story. The material comes from direct workshops with real people, but the off-the-wall delivery enables us to see each of their lives from a different angle. Principal narrator is poet and singer Elektric (Elisha Howe) and alongside her are b-boy dancer Ryan LoGisTic Harston, puppeteer Mohsen Nouri and, creating most of the soundtrack, champion beat-boxer Hobbit (Jack Hobbs).

Hip-hop theatre meets puppetry in many different ways during the show’s unbroken 70 minutes, but the effect is constantly alive and thought-provoking. The four performers cross over between each other’s disciplines in sequences where dancers perform as if puppets, with boxes on their heads, where one or more operate puppets to a narrative, and where all there is is the music.

A girl cuts herself because magazines give her a negative body image, so she’s played by a puppet made entirely of paper, while another gives birth to a baby made entirely of boxes. There’s humour with a boom box becoming the head of a dancing puppet, but there’s a political message behind this too.
Running through the whole show is a thread following Omar, a boy in a grey hoodie who feels marginalised and invisible and reacts with a mixture of fear and aggression. This puppet – an empty hooded top – is startlingly human in form despite its lack of a face or lower body, and the skill of the puppetry here is really striking. The sequence when Omar finds a voice and finally connects is, along with the Paper Girl, among the most emotionally charged parts of the work.

What Saha and Buckmaster achieve in spades here is a perfect balance between emotional tension and engaging humour, and the entire piece is delivered with such energy that it can’t fail to keep its audience engaged. Rarely will you find such weighty issues leaving you with quite such a sense of exhilaration.

Broke ‘n’ Beat Collective plays at Unity until Saturday 13th February after which it continues on a 14 venue tour ending April 2nd.

This review was originally written for and pubished by Good News Liverpool.

Ryan LoGisTic Harston  & Mohsen Nouri with Omar - Photo (c) Theatre Rites

Black – 20 Stories High – Playhouse Studio – 28/01/2015

This week we saw Benedict Cumberbatch being roundly berated in the press for being racist when he thought he was being quite the opposite. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had got into hot water by using the wrong terminology, intentionally or not, but this occurrence came with perfect timing to get the subject of racial abuse into everyone’s minds, ahead of the opening night of Keith Saha’s new work in the Playhouse Studio.

Nikki doesn’t see herself as racist – she doesn’t see her family as racist – but when a new family (who happen to be black) move into the street she can’t help noticing the reaction. Over the next hour or so we see her confront the opinions of her family, her neighbours and ultimately herself as she struggles to understand and to form her own view of the situation.

Abby Melia makes a hugely impressive professional debut in what is very nearly a solo performance as Nikki. At first she mirrors the behaviour of her own community but when she turns up for her work placement at the day nursery, and finds herself meeting them via their children, she becomes increasingly torn between her need to conform and her realisation that she’s met a good family.

Craig Shanda spends much of the play behind the decks providing the soundtrack to the piece, and he delivers his lines musically. He represents rather than plays the role of Precious, the elder son of the new family who Nikki finds a bond with as the play progresses.

This is a tremendous piece of writing from Saha, who attacks the issues head on but never offers any easy solutions or happy endings. It’s important for a piece like this to act as a catalyst for discussion rather than a neat explanation. In early scratch performances, the author says people thought it might be set some decades ago, failing to believe that people really behave like this today, but he observes that if anything we are going backwards in our post 9/11 world, with undercurrents of racism on a sharp increase. It will be interesting to see the reactions that this piece gets in its various diverse tour destinations, and when it airs in school performances.

Director Julia Samuels worked with the cast over a 2½ week period to consolidate the journey that the characters go through and their work has paid off in a powerful and compelling performance. Miriam Narabbo’s simple but effective set, with some touches of playroom quirkiness, is lit by Douglas Kuhrt.

Touring from 3rd February via The MAC Belfast, The Key Peterborough, Contact Manchester, Bolton Octagon, Lawrence Batley Huddersfield, Burnley Arts Centre, St Helens Chester Lane Library, The Albany Deptford, and MAC Birmingham, Closing 20th March.

Melody Loses her Mojo – Liverpool Playhouse – 21/09/2013

“Some things are more important than getting off your tits”

(Note: may contain spoilers)

Melody and her younger sister Harmony used to live with foster parents in the lake district, but Melody was too much of a handful and is back in Dumpton Lodge in the city, over a hundred miles away. Her family is now an ad-hoc affair mainly comprising social worker Jackie and Wet Jeff, a residential worker at the lodge. She has adopted herself a brother, Rizla, but he has left the care system now and is trying to make his own way. It isn’t as easy as he thought and he has to resort to ways of making money that he didn’t have in mind.

When Blessing arrives in the lodge, recently sent from Nigeria and yearning to return to her Auntie, the status quo is unbalanced by the friction between her and Melody, made worse by the fact that Rizla fancies his chances with Blessing.

Wet Jeff can’t cope, and plans to take Melody on a trip to Harmony’s birthday party fall apart, leaving Melody more disillusioned than ever with the system. The final straw is the revelation that Harmony is to be adopted by her foster parents. Melody steals the keys to a van and the three set off on a seemingly random journey of escape to the country. What the other two don’t know is that Melody has a plan, and they find themselves complicit in abducting Harmony.

Joining them on the journey is Mojo. Mojo is a rucksack shaped like a monster, given to Melody by Harmony. Mojo is Melody’s good luck charm, companion and confidant. From the outset Mojo takes on a personality of his own, animated by puppeteers who double as Jackie and Wet Jeff, and rather surprisingly lifelike. During the play, Mojo takes on a number of different guises and provides both a mirror to reflect Melody’s emotional states and a means for her to discuss her inner thoughts with the audience.

Melody does lose her Mojo, but it is far more than Mojo that the three of them find along this journey of self discovery.

The story is played out on an ever-moving set made up of gaudily coloured street art and furniture, the fantastical designs and saturated colours sometimes adding to the psychedelic feel of some of the scenes in which the characters seek refuge in drugs and alcohol.

Also portrayed through puppetry is Harmony, and I would defy anyone not to see past the puppeteers and believe that she is very much alive.

“Everybody gets shit dumped on them; not just us” says Rizla. The three central performances of Remmie Milner, Darren Kuppan and Simone James as Melody, Rizla and Blessing are tremendously strong and make a very balanced trio. This is a long and potentially very wordy piece and they achieve a perfect pacing throughout. There are some heavily emotion laden silences in the second act especially which are beautifully timed and in which the very enthusiastic audience held a mesmerised stillness. Keith Saha’s script allows us to see with astonishing clarity the problems that they face and their strategies for coping, but at no point does the play ever reduce itself to becoming preachy or overtly political. What is more important is the opportunity to throw a window open into the minds of young people in care and allow us to think about the added pressures, disappointments and tragedies they face on top of the usual pains of growing up in a harsh world.

Zoe Hunter and Samuel Dutton complete the acting cast with their dual roles as Jackie and Jeff and as physical artists who animate the non-human performances. Their parts are subtly written and blend into the background, but this enables their specialised form of stagecraft to work seamlessly.

The tone is set from the outset by a soundtrack largely performed live on stage by champion beat boxer, Hobbit, accompanied by cellist Hannah Marshall. The pace eases off substantially in the second act, allowing more space for the development of the individual characters’ stories, and for us to fully appreciate just how moving and lyrical the text is.

Here are roundly drawn characters who we cannot help caring about, despite their frailties, failings and outbursts of rage. This is uncompromising writing performed with tremendous energy and conviction and the story it sets before us needs to be told.

The audience at the first performance I attended was balanced heavily toward young people, but the writing and performances should have a very broad appeal. It is a style of work bound to engage with younger audiences, but all theatre lovers should enjoy this piece for its energy, honesty and optimism.

I now add that I have seen this production again two days later and was even more captivated by its magic. Some originally slightly clunky scene changing had been ironed out and was much more fluid, while the pacing was honed even more closely to keep the narrative flowing smoothly. This is a firecracker of a play that deserves to fill houses and ought to be one of the season's hot tickets.

Melody Loses her Mojo is co-produced by 20 Stories High, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and Curve Theatre Leicester.

It runs at Liverpool Playhouse until Friday 27th September, after which it tours to Contact Manchester, Curve Leicester, Lawrence Batley Huddersfield and The Key Peterborough.

See www.everymanplayhouse.com and www.20storieshigh.org.uk for details and tour dates.