A pair of white trainers hang above the centre of a traverse stage; below is a pit in the platform from which a white-clad figure rises to reach up to them. Who or what is it?
The trainers are said to have been there for twenty years and belonged to a boy the police killed who now, according to urban myth, returns as the Baitface who will bring bad luck to anyone who walks beneath them without first covering their face. Teenage entrepreneur Kai exploits this by selling Ballys (masking balaclavas).
Now, with his mate Joy (born female but identifying differently) and drug aided, he is trying to call up gullyman Baitface, but that is interrupted by a newsflash: the Met has CCTV footage of a criminal incident.
What have sixteen-year-old Joy, Kai and his slightly older half-brother Khaleem done? A sequence of surreal, short scenes mixes now with flashback and CCTV enactment and the prowling presence of Baitface.
It is a picture of young people under pressure from school and from peers and parents; teenagers who feel under surveillance and a target for police attention. It is a play that holds you with its weird story. In an unvoiced line, the script asks, "is this a ghost, a god or a trick of the light?" It doesn't give an answer, though what seems dangerous could turn out to be beneficent.
Dramatist Tife Kusoro has a keen ear for the talk of today’s black teenagers (which can be a challenge if you are not used to it) and director Monique Touko, aided by scene, light and sound design, creates an atmosphere where anything can happen, and she draws fine performances from her cast.
Selorm Adonu’s Kai mixes insecurity with a display of bravado, and there’s a touching closeness between him and Kadiesha Belgrave’s Joy. She perfectly captures Joy’s embarrassment when wearing a skirt on parental orders. Ebenezer Gyau makes Khaleem one of the gang but, marking a distance between himself and the younger pair, he is caught up with his concern over girlfriend Angel: he is writing rap poems to her but she’s being unresponsive.
All three make instant transitions to the alter-ego selves that the Met caught on camera writhing in movement director Kloé Dean’s choreography, while Dani Harris-Walters executes it with dazzling accuracy as he clambers over walls, bounds cross the stage or pivots in breakdance as Baitface.
Is this all happening in the our world, or does G also switch to another reality? That pair of trainers overhead is a reminder of other markers of racist violence, but this isn’t another documentary; it is boldly imaginative and very theatrical.