Is it to be African American or Critical Whiteness Studies?

* Cherrelle Skeete in Beneatha’s Place at the Young Vic. Photo: © Johan Persson.jpg

Daniel Nelson

Kwame Kwei-Armah has compared living with his Grenada-born parents in Britain to existing with two types of theatre: he would be serving rum to his father and his pals, while his mother was hosting church meetings in the living-room.

His play, Beneatha’s Place at the Young Vic, where he is artistic director, is also like two types of theatre.

Part one is about fun characters — and some unknowingly funny, with engaging characters, good dialogue and an interesting situation, as a young African American-Nigerian couple move into a Lagos house being vacated by their White US Baptist predecessors and come face to face with marital and cultural obstacles and pre-independence manoeuvring.

In part two, the bride of half a century ago is now head of African American Studies at a US university, and fosters a faculty discussion in her former marital home on the validity of Critical Whiteness Studies. Kwei-Armah tries to humanise it by making each faculty member distinctive and arguing for sharply differing viewpoints, but though it’s interesting you feel as though you are watching mouthpieces lined up on the wide stage (perhaps I haven’t spent enough time talking to academics?).

The piece never quite leaps off the stage, but it’s a bold, brave, bodacious attempt to wrestle with important topics, such as critical race theory (little read but much discussed) or whether Black students are tired of viewing race through the prism of slavery. There are laughs along the way, too, as well as audience gasps as white professors and a Nigerian-American junior lecturer respond to the academic issue at hand with personal revelations or surprising intellectual stances.

Other currents, including British colonial divide and rule tactics, the power of masks and race quotes are touched on, adding more spice to the mix.

It’s an absorbing production.

* Beneatha’s Place is at the Young Vic, The Cut, SE1 8LZ, until 5 August. Info: https://www.youngvic.org/