The title is realised literally, with
the Young Vic’s main stage being flooded (to the depth of an inch or
two, anyway) for the UK première of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s
play. The brown is, presumably, the colour of the African/American skin
of almost all of them; the red is, inevitably, blood – at first, the
menarcheal blood of protagonist Oya, later a much grislier issue.
This piece runs in the main house whilst McCraney’s first success,
The Brothers Size, returns to its
Maria studio. It is with shame that I admit that, on first seeing the
earlier play, I missed the full impact of McCraney’s dramatic voice. I
find myself now tuning in completely to a play which is less linear and
more atmospheric. It is not simply a matter of Miriam Buether’s design,
which turns the entire space into a zone unto itself, neither land nor
water, a chamber in which meanings and connotations can reverberate;
McCraney himself has created a world between worlds.
On the one hand there is the more or less contemporary American South,
in which promising athlete Oya has a series of encounters – at best
unsatisfactory, at worst tragic – with various local suitors whilst
trying to find her path through life as a runner and/or a mother. On
the other, the characters’ names divulge that they also represent
figures from Yoruba mythology: Oya literally runs like the wind, and
like her goddess namesake she is involved with both Shango and Ogun, as
well as with the trickster-figure Elegba. (The latter two also occur in
The Brothers Size, but
although there are similarities of circumstance and history I am unsure
how much sense it makes to speak of them being “the same” characters.)
As Oya, Ony Uhiara brings the same combination of physical coltishness
and increasing disillusionment that she showed in the RSC’s tour of
Noughts And Crosses early this
year. Ashley Walters, the former Asher D of controversial rappers So
Solid Crew, is a magnetic stage presence: more than once when Shango
enters and another character reports that they see him (McCraney has
his characters speak their stage directions), Shango responds, “How
could she not?”, and with Walters one can believe it. Walter
Meierjohann directs by specifying the physical aspects but leaving
significance and allusion to fly free.
Written for the Financial
Times.