Boys Bring Life to Thinking About Suicide
Ryan Calais Cameron’s For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy was inspired by Ntozake Shange’s 1974 seminal work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, and opens with six black boys showing their struggle as black people, writhing painfully, falling and floundering before they are saved and uplifted by the others, writes Michael Holland.
First, I need to let the reader know who these black boys are because they are the crux of what makes this such a brilliant show:
Tobi King Bakare – Onyx
Shakeel Haakim – Pitch
Fela Lufadeju – Jet
Albert Magashi – Sable
Mohammed Mansaray – Obsidian
Posi Morakinyo – Midnight
Starting with the early pre-school years of a boy’s life when they are surrounded by loving family telling them how beautiful they are, a change is gonna come when they reach the school playground and the harshness of life turns their beliefs upside down.
They get bullied, they fight back.
As the black boys get older they get harassed by an institutionally racist police force. They fight back.
We see how this perpetual war of attrition wears people down until they are left only with becoming the stereotype of what the media has shown a black boy to be: hoodie-wearing, drug-dealing, misogynistic gang-member from a fatherless broken home.
And this is where Ryan Calais Cameron’s writing and direction shows its brilliance, because he shows black boys have choices and often take them.
Black boys go to school for an education, they have fathers at home, they treat girls right, they have good role models and they seek good jobs with future prospects.
Black boys do make their community and their mothers proud no matter what the right-wing media says.
But all the time there is the ever-present 400 years of slavery and colonisation of Africa that has created an ingrained feeling among the ill-informed and ignorant that a black skin is inferior. And all the time the play and its fantastic cast are proving those white boys wrong.
‘For Black Boys…’ is hi-energy, it evokes regular whoops and cheers from the audience, especially when there are in-jokes about Ghanaians or lines that fly over white people’s heads.
It quickly goes from fighting to dancing to shouting to crooning.
A minimal set means all the attention is on the black boys as they show their façade of masculinity before revealing their tender, inner-self.
Every aspect of life is covered in this play that the writer said is written to get people into the theatre who have never been before. And with dance, song, rap and dialogue from the street, I am sure he succeeded in that with a production that is fully-rounded with sharp edges.
‘For Black Boys…’ depicts what growing up is like for all boys but with the added heaviness of hue.
It culminates in a finale that evokes hope and joy and rousing applause.
Bravo, Ryan Calais Cameron.
Garrick Theatre, 2 Charing Cross Rd, London, WC2H 0HH until 4th May. Times: Monday – Saturday, 7.30pm; Thursday & Saturday matinees, 2.30pm. Admission: £15 – £69.50.
Booking Line: 0330 333 4811 – www.nimaxtheatres.com
