August 2019
It
kills me that a play like The Rolling Stone by Chris Urch needs
to be written, not as a dramatic documentation of things that once happened or might happen, to serve as warning—a
familiar genre since the 1950s, at least—but to highlight situations that are
still current, around the world. But such are the times we’re living in.
The
play is set in during 2010, in Kampala, capital of the East-African country Uganda, where
official edict makes homosexuality illegal, and where a newspaper called The
Rolling Stone routinely publishes names and pictures of people
suspected of homosexuality, whereupon they are often subjected to
society-sanctioned harassment and violence. Against this background,
it starts with the budding romance between a white man, an ex-pat Irish doctor,
Sam (Robert Gilbert) and a young black
man, not quite 20, named Dembe (Ato Blankson-Wood). Complicating matters
further is that the American evangelical influence has been long felt in the
community among local religious leaders; and that Dembe
is brother to one of those leaders, Joe (James Udom). Dembe of course has
been hiding his true, full self from Joe and their sister Naome
(Adenike Thomas); but the strain is increasing,
as “Mama” (Myra Lucretia Taylor) the
woman who has “adopted” the siblings, since the death of their parents, is
trying to set Dembe up with her daughter Wummie (Latoya
Edwards), who has been long mute as a psychological response to a personal
trauma.
Religious
devotion, atheism and fierce political passion collide, bringing all to the overboil point, the play takes no sides save implicitly, by its
very existence, being a plea for humanism.
Sensitively
and skillfully acted under the direction of Saheem Ali, the play combines verité realism
with the poetic techniques involved with performing on an open space,
transitioning from one locale to another, delineating the passage of time and
where necessary, suggesting a mass grouping larger than the six-person cast.
It’s atmospheric, engaging, powerful, life-affirming…and also infuriating. And
sad.
That the world can still actively be like this…
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