Set in 1956, when Sam Selvon’s novella was originally published, this is a vivid portrayal of the life of new arrivals from the Caribbean in the Windrush era. Director Ebenezer Bamgboye gives Roy Williams’s adaptation a bold and visceral production that uses music and dance to add means of expression (movement director Nevena Stojkov, sound designer Tony Gayle) beyond words.
At the heart of the action is Moses. He has already been in London for several years and new arrivals from Trinidad have been given to him as a source of help: Mr London, one of them sarcastically calls him. We meet him first talking to us as though we are another of them, before being joined by the mates he shares a place with: Jamaicans Big City (Gilbert Kyem Jnr) who tries, without success, to make money by setting up public dances, and Lewis, who is on edge because his wife Agnes (Shannon Hayes) is due to arrive soon.
But the next knock on the door is Henry Oliver (Romario Simpson). Moses knew he was coming but had expected to meet him at Waterloo. He is resourceful and confident he has made his own way, even getting help and directions from policemen, but hadn’t listened to the advice of their mutual acquaintance in Trinidad, so Moses is shocked to discover he hasn’t brought any duty free rum or cigarettes and has lost a big chunk of the £5 he could have brought into the country to gambling on the voyage and he has no luggage—just a toothbrush in his pocket and a pair of pyjamas he is wearing under his other clothes. He is so guileless that Moses christens him Galahad.
Moses may be wised-up about London but he is not happy. He dreams of Christina (Aimee Powell), the girl he left behind in Trinidad, the girl whose father offered him money to get him to England and away from her.
At Waterloo, it is not just Agnes whom Lewis finds himself meeting. His mother Tanty (Carol Moses) has come too. She’s haranguing a journalist who has accosted her with a microphone. They are both going to be surprised when they find him living in one room, not the big house they have imagined.
Seven people embodied by seven actors who all get their solo moment when they turn the audience into another clear cut character, all delivering with an intensity that feels double in this intimate theatre but that is honest and true.
The Britain these people have come to and the reception they find here are not what they imagined their mother country to be like. Sam Selvon was one of the first to write about the inherent racism and multiple problems these people had to face, and, though others since have told similar stories,The Lonely Londoners is still all too relevant.
Galahad ends up hating his own black skin after what befalls him, but the underlying ebullience of these characters brings lots of humour, including the misnomers for place names that keep cropping up.
The stark setting indicates location by the flashing lights that spell out postcodes, placing the action in Portobello market, Waterloo or Hampstead and a row of blue boxes provide seats where the cast can sit when not part of the action and house props that don’t fit into pockets.
Elliot Grigg’s lighting concentrates attention, marks change of location and adds beauty to the physical sequences, which are performed with style. Presentation of brutal violence and of the support that the men give each other are especially effective, though not all are so successful. Interpreting them is sometimes a challenge, as too is decoding the strong accents and patois. Voice and dialect coach Audrea Fudge may have done too good a job! But these are actors with powerful voices, and if audiences unfamiliar with the accents have a problem, the experience matches that which these characters met in dealing with Londoners’ English in 1956.
The Lonely Londoners is performed without interval and lasts an hour and forty-five minutes. Every one of the cast earns commendation.