LONDON — Inua Ellams’s plays have been such an enlivening presence on the London stage in recent years that it comes as a particular treat to make contact with the man himself.
“An Evening With an Immigrant,” a solo play written and performed by Ellams, a London-based Nigerian author, allows us 90 minutes in his compassionate and impassioned company as he chronicles the distance he has traveled both physically and psychically from his native West Africa, first to England and then Ireland and back to England, gathering acclaim as a poet, performer and playwright along the way.
The production by Ellams — author of the much-traveled “Barber Shop Chronicles” as well as an insightful take on “Three Sisters,” with Chekhov’s play relocated to Nigeria during the country’s Biafran war — shares a stage with monologues from Alan Bennett and David Hare at the Bridge Theater here. And while those English dramatists represent a long-established senior generation, Ellams and other fast-rising Black artists, several of whom are included in the Bridge repertory season, point to invigorating theatrical prospects ahead.
One of four children born into a Muslim-Christian household — he has three sisters, aptly enough, given his interest in Chekhov’s play — Ellams identifies as “naturally nomadic” and describes a continuing quest “to find people to tell stories to.” (So it flows naturally that the key props in his show are a notepad and a suitcase.)
At some point, though, we all want to feel that we belong, and Ellams gains enormous emotional and politically incisive capital from the difficulties he faces as an immigrant wishing to be accepted by his adopted country.
One especially surreal passage in the play, staged at a reconfigured Bridge Theater for an extended run through Nov. 7, describes him accepting an invitation to Buckingham Palace after public recognition of his work, only to find himself without a proper ID and, he says, in danger of deportation. His applications for residency and then British citizenship have also cost thousands of pounds, and only that first effort has so far been successful.
Ellams turned to poetry after his early thoughts of being a painter were scuppered, he tells us, because he couldn’t afford the paint. Having published his first book of poems at age 20 in 2005, he punctuates his story with some lushly evocative verse that is accompanied more often than not by a gently infectious laugh.
He also tears up here and there, as anyone might in frustration at the various humiliations that have beset him and his family as they try to become one with Britain, the country that young Inua first moved to at age 12. Highlighting displacement as one of the few commonplaces in the world just now, Ellams guides what often feels like a funky fireside chat toward an angrier place, informed at every turn by the plight of migrants around the globe. You exit the show incredibly happy that Ellams exists among British society, and more than ready to join in his fight.
Yolanda Mercy also has personality and charm in abundance, which is useful given that her contribution to the same season of monologues is pretty slight. Like Ellams’s piece, Mercy’s self-penned “Quarter Life Crisis” — which is running in repertory through Saturday — was first seen in 2017 and has now been granted a further platform at a premier theatrical address.
How nice it might have been if the entirely engaging Mercy had used the opportunity to go deeper with her tale of Alicia Adewale, a South Londoner of Nigerian origin who is hurtling somewhat uneasily toward the ripe young age of 26 — hence the quarter-life crisis that gives the 50-minute show its title.
As it is, the evening is sweet but doesn’t really take us anywhere new. As Alicia navigates dating apps and rejects pesky calls from her father, the lovelorn figure in a bathrobe at the show’s start feels like the latest in an array of similarly questing women like Bridget Jones. And given the sexually graphic remark or two peppered in “Quarter Life Crisis,” the erotically minded Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s stage and TV persona, would no doubt warm to a kindred spirit in Alicia, who charts her life in terms of chicken wings and vodka Red Bulls.
At a point of millennial limbo, Alicia resorts to — you guessed it! — Siri for reassurance and comes up short there, too. When she turns to her cellphone to ask whether she is grown up, Siri replies without hesitation, “I’d rather not say.”
A death in the family momentarily lowers a mood that for the most part is kept buoyant under Jade Lewis’s direction. Yet the current Bridge, with evident gaps where seats once were, doesn’t lend itself well to the breaking of the fourth wall that this performer returns to more than once, presumably to lend spontaneity to the event.
At a press performance, Mercy brought to his feet one spectator who, as luck might have it, was a psychotherapist able to lend Alicia support. (The two shared an air hug.) When she asked another audience member, “What makes you a grown-up?,” she was met with the reply “I’m very old.”
Those roped into conversation get a (sanitized) gift by way of thanks, which in context feels like a cop-out if the intention is to highlight the human need for connection. More surely could be done with a heritage rooted in the same Nigerian diaspora that Ellams embodies, but the scattershot feeling of Mercy’s piece works against a cumulative impact.
At the same time, it’s nearly impossible not to share Alicia’s insistence on hope while she lobs various questions across the footlights. “Who knows what tomorrow will bring?” she asks, posing an existential concern to which not even Siri can hazard a reply.
The Bridge season of monologues continues through Nov. 7. bridgetheatre.co.uk
Opinion: Brad West been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization
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Published Apr 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read
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VICTORIA — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West fired off a letter to Premier David Eby last week about Allan Schoenborn, the child killer who changed his name in a bid for anonymity.
“It is completely beyond the pale that individuals like Schoenborn have the ability to legally change their name in an attempt to disassociate themselves from their horrific crimes and to evade the public,” wrote West.
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The Alberta government has legislated against dangerous, long-term and high risk offenders who seek to change their names to escape public scrutiny.
“I urge your government to pass similar legislation as a high priority to ensure the safety of British Columbians,” West wrote the premier.
The B.C. Review Board has granted Schoenborn overnight, unescorted leave for up to 28 days, and he spent some of that time in Port Coquitlam, according to West.
This despite the board being notified that “in the last two years there have been 15 reported incidents where Schoenborn demonstrated aggressive behaviour.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that an individual who has committed such heinous crimes, and continues to demonstrate this type of behaviour, is able to roam the community unescorted.”
Understandably, those details alarmed PoCo residents.
But the letter is also an example of the outspoken mayor’s penchant for to-the-point pronouncements on provincewide concerns.
He’s been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization.
His most recent blast followed the news that the New Democrats were appointing a task force to advise on ways to curb the use of illicit drugs and the spread of weapons in provincial hospitals.
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“Where the hell is the common sense here?” West told Mike Smyth on CKNW recently. “This has just gone way too far. And to have a task force to figure out what to do — it’s obvious what we need to do.
“In a hospital, there’s no weapons and you can’t smoke crack or fentanyl or any other drugs. There you go. Just saved God knows how much money and probably at least six months of dithering.”
He had a pithy comment on the government’s excessive reliance on outside consultants like MNP to process grants for clean energy and other programs.
“If ever there was a place to find savings that could be redirected to actually delivering core public services, it is government contracts to consultants like MNP,” wrote West.
He’s also broken with the Eby government on the carbon tax.
“The NDP once opposed the carbon tax because, by its very design, it is punishing to working people,” wrote West in a social media posting.
“The whole point of the tax is to make gas MORE expensive so people don’t use it. But instead of being honest about that, advocates rely on flimsy rebate BS. It is hard to find someone who thinks they are getting more dollars back in rebates than they are paying in carbon tax on gas, home heat, etc.”
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West has a history with the NDP. He was a political staffer and campaign worker with Mike Farnworth, the longtime NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam and now minister of public safety.
When West showed up at the legislature recently, Farnworth introduced him to the house as “the best mayor in Canada” and endorsed him as his successor: “I hope at some time he follows in my footsteps and takes over when I decide to retire — which is not just yet,” added Farnworth who is running this year for what would be his eighth term.
Other political players have their eye on West as a future prospect as well.
Several parties have invited him to run in the next federal election. He turned them all down.
Lately there has also been an effort to recruit him to lead a unified Opposition party against Premier David Eby in this year’s provincial election.
I gather the advocates have some opinion polling to back them up and a scenario that would see B.C. United and the Conservatives make way (!) for a party to be named later.
Such flights of fancy are commonplace in B.C. when the NDP is poised to win against a divided Opposition.
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By going after West, the advocates pay a compliment to his record as mayor (low property taxes and a fix-every-pothole work ethic) and his populist stands on public safety, carbon taxation and other provincial issues.
The outreach to a small city mayor who has never run provincially also says something about the perceived weaknesses of the alternatives to Eby.
“It is humbling,” West said Monday when I asked his reaction to the overtures.
But he is a young father with two boys, aged three and seven. The mayor was 10 when he lost his own dad and he believes that if he sought provincial political leadership now, “I would not be the type of dad I want to be.”
When West ran for re-election — unopposed — in 2022, he promised to serve out the full four years as mayor.
He is poised to keep his word, confident that if the overtures to run provincially are serious, they will still be there when his term is up.
LIVE Q&A WITH B.C. PREMIER DAVID EBY: Join us April 23 at 3:30 p.m. when we will sit down with B.C. Premier David Eby for a special edition of Conversations Live. The premier will answer our questions — and yours — about a range of topics, including housing, drug decriminalization, transportation, the economy, crime and carbon taxes. Click HERE to get a link to the livestream emailed to your inbox.
New York Times reporter and CNN senior political analyst Maggie Haberman explains the significance of David Pecker, the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, taking the stand in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump.
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