Theatre - Lauren Booth enjoys two plays that challenge ideas about African American art

It's a stormy night in 1960s Harlem. Outside, a riot rages and the streets are alive with sirens and looting. Inside his shabby apartment, Bill, an artist and hands-off radical, concentrates on his painting. The subject of which illustrates the play's central question: what has happened to black womanhood?

The first two paintings of his triptych depict childhood innocence and the glory of "Mother Africa". When Bill's neighbours bring to his home a feisty Harlem girl who has lost everything in the riots, he decides that "Tommy" must pose as his final model. She will be the embodiment of all that he feels is wrong with her gender and her race.

This is a high-energy tear-jerker with moments of real humour. Its star (among a very strong cast) is Jenny Jules, as the sassy and soulful Tommy. When she bounds onstage, all sneakers, straight wig and misplaced hope, the audience instantly loves her. (At the matinee I went to, several people couldn't resist shouting "Don't listen to them!" when the other characters try to dampen her spirit.) Part of the play's clever charm is that the ethical questions discussed by Alice Childress's characters are never allowed to become dry or dull. Tommy is sternly told to say "African Americans" when she blames "the niggers" for her homelessness. She immediately turns around and corrects herself: "In that case, some African Americans burnt my home."

The late Childress was an acclaimed African American writer, the first to be produced on Broadway and the first woman of ethnic-minority origin ever to win an Obie for off-Broadway excellence. With Wine in the Wilderness, she gracefully and simply explores the theme of colour ethics. The shuffling wit of Ol' Timer (played by the Tricycle veteran Ray Shell) stops the play from becoming overpowering. After Bill describes the hateful, unfeminine woman he yearns to paint, Ol' Timer nods sagely, and with impeccable timing mutters: "Sounds like you talkin' 'bout my first wife."

In several long, touching speeches, Tommy confronts each character with their patronising hypocrisy; she is transformed from Harlem hustler into demure black beauty. Finally, Ricco Ross's narcissistic Bill can see that, beneath the brashness, she possesses more bravery and truth than he or his work will ever have.

Nicolas Kent, the Tricycle's director, has chosen to use Water, a new play by Winsome Pinnock, as the curtain-raiser to this successful double bill. Water centres on an interview between a Brit-Art celebrity and a hotshot young journalist. Della, the artist (played by Cecilia Noble), who uses her life in her paintings, is set for superstardom; she has captured the attention of the "Kensington Gallery" crowd by revealing her background of drug abuse and parental suicide. But all is not as it seems. When she seduces the handsome Ed, played by Gary McDonald, she entangles him in a web of deceit that promises to make them both famous for their work- if he will co-operate with her hoax and put his morals to one side. The play questions our own lust for the Tracey Emin school of "authenticity" and "autobiography" in modern art. Ed, disgusted by Della's manipulation of "truth" and the ugly images of black misery she recreates to titillate a white, middle-class market, says several times: "But did you have to make it so ugly? . . . You couldn't leave anything out, could you?"

Challenging a superficial and judgemental culture, both plays show that they are not afraid to expose what many others might leave out.

Wine in the Wilderness by Alice Childress and Water by Winsome Pinnock are at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn, London NW6 (020 7328 1000) until 17 March

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website