For my last evening in London, I was torn about what I should see - something familiar or something new? A well-known European opera at Covent Garden or a lesser-known play at the National Theater? I boarded the underground train in the morning, hoping to purchase a reduced-priced ticket for a show later that evening. I headed in the general direction of the two venues, still undecided.
As I weighed the pros and cons of each prospect, I resolved to try something new. By that time, I had alighted at the Covent Garden station and walked somewhat longingly by the Royal Opera House - a beloved venue I frequented often as a student in the UK. It was where I developed an appreciation for opera and ballet. But I kept on, to the National Theater.
Londoner friends told me about Moon On a Rainbow Shawl, which they hadn't yet seen, but about which they had heard positive reviews. The play was about Trinidadians - a people I know relatively little about, but with whom I suspected I had something in common as a fellow person of African descent. I was curious and bought a ticket.
When I returned to the theater that evening, I kept looking around for the Cottesloe Theater - one of three theaters that comprise the National Theater complex - where the play would be performed. I asked an usher, who directed me outside of the main building, to the right and then another right. Why did the play about black folks have to be around the way, in the back? I'm sure they had their reasons, which probably had nothing to do with race, but still, the optics weren't good.
It was an intimate space, and the set was evocative of a poor, dreary neighborhood in the developing world. There might as well have been chickens running around. The play centered around four main characters who live in the same compound: a middle-age prostitute bon vivant who likes to entertain yankee soldiers in the evening, flirt with male neighbors, and antagonize female neighbors; a thirtysomething man who drives a trolley and is set on immigrating to the UK; his girlfriend, who loves him and who somewhat naively leads her boss on, provoking jealousy from her boyfriend; and an upright, hardscrabble matron who more or less presides over the group, trying but failing to keep everyone together, except for the woman of the night whom she wants to remove from the compound.
The premise of the play reminded me of A Raisin in the Sun, or Good Times: hard-working poor folks trying to make a better life for themselves and their children, but seemingly stymied at every turn. The trolley driver persists with his plan to move to the UK, to get out of the impoverished and impoverishing ghetto, forsaking his friends, lover and their unborn child. What will become of him? And if he finds success, whatever that means for him, will the price have been worth it? The characters live such a precarious existence, with apparently such little control over their destiny, that breaking away, as awful as it may be in terms of relationship costs, might be the only way to a better future.
The production is on through the beginning of June at the National Theater
National Theatre, South Bank, London. SE1 9PX
Box Office 020 7452 3000
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=68377
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