You'd be forgiven for thinking that Deptford Baby is a piece of gig theatre, since it starts with DJ Tommy Tappah welcoming in the audience with a warm smile and some strong beats before calling for applause as he announces the entrance of Chino Igwe.
Igwe, a mature student who aspires to be a world-famous novelist, is familiar in his local community at the heart of South East London’s Deptford for his telling of tales of adventure and daring.
On a July day, this Nigerian Brit is at a crossroads of his life, heading up Deptford High Street on his way to Goldsmiths University clutching his completed thesis when the pavement at his feet starts to reverberate.
The thundery shaking leads us away from reality, plunging us right into one of Igwe’s wild escapades as the waters of the nearby Thames rise and flood Deptford.
Igwe is the hero of his own story that would not look amiss amongst the ancient myths.
His adversaries are of an epic scale, first a biblical massive fish that swallows him and then a giant snake whose origins could be drawn perhaps from the Viking’s Jormungand, the East’s underground dwelling Naga, or the Chinese underwater white snake.
Igwe fights courageously, but it is when the community works together that its foes are vanquished.
Chukwudi Onwere, who wrote Deptford Baby and performs as Chino Igwe with charm and energy, is Peckham born and raised, and his writing must be drawn from his own experiences such are the tender references to the area’s history and landmarks and the honesty of Igwe’s schoolboy anecdotes and family yarns.
His text has some lovely lines—Christopher Marlowe’s murder is one of Deptford’s freckles left by history, love interest Adese has braids as long as the Central Line—but these are too few gems that float on muddy waters.
Often, the writing is unclear; in what seems a clumsy metaphor, Onwere parallels the cutting down of the giant snake with the toppling of slaver Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, and sometimes the text is ungainly, as if Igwe is improvising, contributing to the story ending without realising its moral.
Onwere has a daring approach to blending cultural imagery, from flying carpets to enchanted swords, and making it work; with just a little more of this magic, Deptford Baby could be an enthralling tale.