A taste of black British reality

By Chris Jones

September 17, 2007


At first blush, the success of the playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah seems to have flowed from his styling himself as the British equivalent of August Wilson.

Kwei-Armah's "Elmina's Kitchen," a huge hit at the National Theatre in London and later in West End, is set entirely in an eatery, recalling Wilson's "Two Trains Running." The fractured families and the father-son battle at the heart of the play evoke "Fences" and "Seven Guitars." The dominant theme is personal responsibility and gun violence in the black community, recalling "King Hedley II." The central character of Kwei-Armah's moralistic 2003 play, a struggling, flawed father named Deli, makes very similar mistakes to Wilson's Hedley. The consequences are equally tragic.

Kwei-Armah, present this weekend at the Congo Square Theatre Company's skilled and moving Midwest premiere, freely admits the obvious Wilson influence and its part in his colossal U.K. success. Largely excluded from the theater establishment in London, black Britons have never really had a prophetic, socially oriented playwright such as Wilson to call their own. Kwei-Armah has filled that gap.

But this is, of course, an overly reductive comparison fair to neither side. And although the production values are not up to Congo Square's usual standards, it surely shouldn't get in the way of you seeing Derrick Sanders' powerful production of a widely and justly praised play by a new writer whose work is overdue in Chicago.

At this point in his career, Kwei-Armah does not in any way reach the poetic, lyrical and spiritual heights of Wilson's work. So what? Who does? More important, he has different things to say and different ways to say them. The black British experience, after all, is both strikingly similar to the African-American experience and entirely different. In one of life's crueler ironies, the play suggests, the very survival of black Britons who grew up on African-American heroes now depends on their resistance to certain U.S. imports.

Whereas Wilson mostly shied away from young characters, Kwei-Armah sticks an at-risk teen (powerfully played by Phillip Brannon, a rich, young Chicago actor who's going all kinds of places) right at the heart of the play. Instead of just evoking the dangers of the global glamorization of "thug culture," Kwei-Armah knows how to zero in on its appeal for vulnerable young people. And that's what gives "Elmina's Kitchen" its emotional oomph. Thanks also to immensely, powerfully authentic work from Ann Joseph (as the woman who might save this boy) and Morocco Omari (as the man who might destroy him), you ache for the kid.

You also ache for his dad. The actor Anthony Irons kept reminding me of that photograph of the Chinese student staring down a tank in Tiananmen Square. Irons is a relatively slight man with nervous, darting eyes. And in this superb performance, he does his best to save his son while also feeding the very source of his destruction. You understand Deli's guilt and yet you also see that the forces bearing down on him would snap most of us -- black, white, young, old, British, and American -- like twigs.

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"Elmina's Kitchen"

When: Through Oct. 14

Where : Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green St.

Running time : 2 hours, 30 minutes

Tickets : $16.50-$32.50 at 312-733-6000