In its former incarnation as The Drum, what is now the Legacy Centre of Excellence provided a cultural hub for the black and Asian community in Birmingham and the West Midlands for over twenty years. The Drum went into liquidation in 2016 and it reopened under new management as Legacy Centre of Excellence in 2019, just in time to be shut down again by COVID. Since then, it has built back up and it is the ideal venue for Never Grow Old at the start of Black History Month.
Never Grow Old is a play by Casey Bailey, who also wrote Please Do Not Touch, and Corey Weekes, which tells the story of the origins of the Notting Hill Carnival. It serves as a nostalgic reminder of the past to an older generation and an education to a younger audience who might not know what their parents and grandparents experienced.
At the start of the play, Marcus (Dwayne Kayin) and his white girlfriend, Alison (Rosie Akerman), are getting ready to go to Carnival. Marcus is proud of his Jamaican heritage and Alison doesn't want to let him down. She is worried she will stand out because of the colour of her skin; Marcus reminds her that he has to deal with the same thing every day and she'll be fine. They accidentally knock over a framed photo of Marcus’s grandma, Mavis (Xsara-Sheneille Pryce), which brings her spirit back to earth for a last 36-hour visit to earth.
The first half of the play is a fish out of water story of Mavis’s exposure to a world of phone apps, Ubers, Siri, Spotify and contactless payment. When they get to Carnival, Mavis is unimpressed by what it has become. Flirtation and courtship have been replaced by overtly sexual wine dancing, and solidarity and mutual respect have given way to street violence, so in the second half, Mavis takes Marcus and Alison back to 1966 to show them how things used to be.
Mavis, Marcus and Alison take a long coach ride to 1960s Carnival. When Marcus asks why they didn’t go by train, Mavis points out that, although the clothes were cool and the music was great back then, there were things black people couldn’t do and places it was not safe to go, including trains. When they get to Carnival, Marcus and Alison see a whole new side to Mavis who turns out to be a fabulous dancer when the DJ plays the ska and rock steady music of her youth. The show ends on a positive note: fear and division can be healed by respect, love and solidarity.
The cast of three principals plus an ensemble of four dancers is excellent, and they move the action smoothly between the different locations on Ebrahim Nazier’s simple but functional set. Tonia Daley-Campbell’s production gives the show an inclusive, audience-friendly, almost Carnivalesque feel and the different styles of dance, modern day and from the '60s, are beautifully evoked by Tanya Anderson’s choreography. Music runs throughout the show, and Auden Allen’s sound design is seamless and atmospheric. Part of the pleasure of watching it was being in an audience for whom Mavis’s music and dancing was a part of their own lives, and there was an audible response when they recognised a song, a dance or a reference in the dialogue.
Never Grow Old is a love letter to the Windrush generation who accepted Britain’s invitation to help rebuild the country after the war but who faced hostility when they got here. Jamaica’s national motto is “Out of many, one people”, and Mavis reminds Marcus and Alison, and the audience, that the message is still relevant today.