Manchester’s HOME seems to be specialising in hosting unusual updates to classic plays. After The Cherry Orchard in space and The Merchant of Venice in 1930s London, Yusra Warsama’s Of All The Beautiful Things In The World moves Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba from 1940s Spain to present-day Moss Side.
Following the death of her second husband, matriarch Mama / Ugdoon (Marcia Mantack) bows to peer pressure from neighbours on her housing estate and demands her daughters observe an extended period of mourning. This does not go down well. Resentments are already building as the family makes plans for the arranged marriage which has been set for Mariam (Sara Abanur)—Ugdoon’s daughter from her first marriage and possibly illegitimate. Mariam’s siblings Aalyah (Cora Kirk) and Suhela (Xsara-Sheneille) begrudge her receiving an inherence from her birth father. Mrs F A (Flo Wilson), the closest person Mama has to a friend, does her best to keep the peace but knows she is fighting a losing battle.
It is apparent from the opening scene—Aalyah masturbating on the sofa—that writer / director Yusra Warsama is not attempting a literal translation of Lorca’s original. Whereas in the original it is pretty easy to spot the daughter doomed for a tragic ending, Warsama is more egalitarian. Mariam and Suhela seem like different sides of the same coin. Xsara-Sheneille’s interpretation of Suhela is in the tradition of the original, a starry-eyed romantic innocently leaving herself open to exploitation. Sara Abanur plays Mariam as the family outsider so desperate to fit in she forces herself to ignore the increasingly obvious signs her mother has dipped into her inheritance. She is not so much innocent as self-imposed ignorant.
In any other production, Marcia Mantack would be the stand-out performance. She carries herself like Stonehenge come to life, regarding her daughters with a cold commanding look in the manner of The Godfather. But this is a cast without a single weak link. Flo Wilson not only turns Mrs F A into a Lear’s Fool being able to challenge Mama, she gets to deliver some of Warsama’s funniest lines. Catching Aalyah relieving her tension, she dryly remarks that that explains why her mother keeps the sofa covered in plastic. Aalyah has facial scars and walks with a limp, but Cora Kirk’s predominant characteristic is barely restrained anger. Of all the children, she is the most worldly with a job outside of the family and able to resist the easy temptations of sex. Kirk also carries off a moment of humiliation so intense as to be hard to watch.
Whereas the original play had a pressure-cooker atmosphere of passion repressed for too long, Warsama sets a mood of sullen disappointment or of hopes going unrealised. The wordless opening sequence—of the cast behaving like a cheerful family playing pranks on each other—is rapidly shown to be an illusion. Ellie Light’s split-level set gives the impression of a place where things are not quite right. The houseproud furniture still in plastic wrapping is belied by a chaotic jumble of rags and cloths lying around the room. Despite being mature, the children are infantilised, still sleeping in bunk beds. In a neat touch, Ugdoon uses the high cost of property in Manchester to deter her children from leaving the family home.
This is a dense and demanding production. Although the stifling Mediterranean heat is missing from the Manchester setting, Warsama gives some scenes the confused sense of a fever-dream. Tom Leah AKA Werkha sits at the side of the stage contributing live music. From time to time, a dramatic groan is emitted from the chair used by the late father. The cast break off into blank verse, with musical backing, which deepens the motivation and background of the characters. However, as they also ruminate on a wide range of subjects—colonisation, Abu Ghraib prison—it can get a bit overwhelming and the streams-of-consciousness format obscures the relevance.
Of All The Beautiful Things In The World is a challenging and rewarding production featuring exceptional performances. For some time, HOME seemed to favour the films shown at the arts complex over the theatre productions. The current season shows welcome signs this imbalance is being redressed.