Bristol Old Vic
The stage has been reconfigured as an instantly recognisable school hall. Five Black American youths in meticulous school uniforms, and a headmaster in formal academic robes come on stage; they immediately go into a perfect gospel performance of that fine old hymn Trust and Obey.One boy deliberately goads the soloist, using "strong racial and homophobic slurs", which the website reassures us have been "carefully rehearsed to reduce the impact on the cast". The headmaster (Daon Broni) chews out the boy, Pharos (Terique Jarrett) for hesitating in the song, but he is reluctant to "snitch" on the boy who distracted him. However, as leader of the choir he engineers an argument about performing traditional music in a modern style and uses it as a pretext to kick the other boy, Bobby (Alistair Nwachukwu) out of it.
It would be misleading to describe Choir Boy as a Black, gay, Christian Dead Poets Society; but that's the first thing which came into my mind when watching it. We are in one of those hyper-traditional American Preparatory schools. The boys believe in and identify with the ethos of being Drew Boys. They quote the rules and traditions of the school with the sort of reverence normally reserved for the Declaration of Independence, often accompanied by a haka-like salute. To sing the school hymn at graduation is the greatest conceivable honour. It's a Christian school: all the boys talk about their love of the Lord Jesus in an open and unforced way.
There's one white teacher, Mr Pendleton (Mike Turner) who teaches an elective debate-cum-philosophy class and encourages the boys to challenge received ideas; but refreshingly Black protestantism or the prep school ethos are two things which are not questioned. It's hard to imagine British playwright setting a drama in an intensely religious community without bunging in a token atheist or a virtuous Muslim to rock the heavenly boat. Evangelical Christians have particular issues around homosexuality, but this never becomes significant in the story. Pharos is certainly bullied and called a sissy (and worse) but no-one suggests that he can't love Jesus if he fancies boys.
It may be that we are intended to infer some of this from the action: it's not a play which hammers home its subtexts. We're told early on that the gospel choir was started after a master heard a group of boys singing in the showers; and in Act II, the shower room becomes the venue for Pharos's major sexual encounter; but if that's Symbolism we're left to figure it out for ourselves. Maybe I'm reaching because I couldn't honestly see how the ideas in the play hang together. (I think it may have been edited since it's original Broadway run: online synopses imply a version with a stronger narrative.) It's a courageous choice to stage at the Bristol Old Vic with a British cast; but the American accents, the singing, the dancing and that acting are faultless. (So, one cannot refrain from mentioning, are the abs.)
It's structurally odd. There's terrific a-cappella gospel singing all the way through it. Apart from the two teachers, all the characters are in the choir: we don't see any other pupils, or indeed, lessons. It isn't a musical as such; but not all the singing is "in character". One boy performs chair-dances and impressive leaps in music class; everyone performs a gospel number while making their permitted daily phone call to to their parents.
Act one feels more like a series of sketches than a single play. It's never less than interesting; and many ideas bounce around the dialogue. Everyone is astonishingly articulate; the headmaster positively likes pupils challenging his authority provided their dialectic is strong enough. I am not completely sure that I believe that two teenage boys could almost come to blows about the significance of the gospel tradition. Pharos argues that the songs need to be reinvented for each generation; and that they are only the songs of freedom only in so far as they speak to people's spirits in the here-and-now. Bobby insists that they are primarily artefacts of the underground railroad movement and thinks that denying that devalues them. It's unquestionably a tour-de-force on the part of the actors; and I did like the tension around whether you should say "enslaved-and-formerly-enslaved-africans" or could just go with "slaves". But it didn't sound like the debate two seventeen years olds would have; even two brilliant ones.
I liked the observation that Keep Your Eye On the Prize clearly derives from Keep Your Hand On the Plough, but that both feed into Barak Obama's "Yes we can!" Pointedly it's the white teacher, Pendleton, who freaks out most strongly over the n-word.
The second half becomes more directly about Pharos's sexuality; which is handled very frankly but with an admirable lack of prurience or shock tactics. The back of the stage lifts to reveal, inevitably, the shower-block. Everyone keeps towels decorously round themselves and they do a very touching performance of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child; but inevitably, all the sexual tensions come to a head. Pharos has broken the school rules against "intimacy" and blown his chance to sing Trust and Obey at his own graduation; and he's arguably spoiled the brotherly love between the choir members, although he ends up cuddling his room-mate. But I couldn't find a single narrative pathway in which love, race, music, scholarly tradition and faith were shown to thematically cohere.
Perhaps there wasn't supposed to be. When one of the boys is challenged by the headmaster to tell him what he witnessed in the shower room, he replies "I saw people being people".
Maybe that's what the play is showing us, too.
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you enjoy these reviews, please consider leaving a tip on the Ko-Fi platform.
If you can afford it, please consider becoming a Patreon, by pledging £1 or more each time I publish an essay on the main blog. (I don't charge for these little reviews.)
Please do not feed the troll.
No comments:
Post a Comment