Birmingham and The Africa Consortium

Just back from a very interesting day trip to Birmingham with Michael Walling, to attend the regional launch of the Africa Consortium and for a meeting at The Drum, one of the venues on the upcoming Border Crossings tour.

The Drum turns out to be a lovely building, full of activity and creativity. We were very impressed and very much hope that this is the model for the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham. It would be great to have a centre like this in London.

The Africa Consortium launch was at Birmingham Rep - another very impressive building but this time much more cool (temperature, not hipness) and English in feel. John Kani was performing in his new play, which we saw (see below) and he spoke at the launch. He is a marvellous speaker, inspirational. I came to the meeting with a fair amount of scepticism about this consortium, worried that this was UK Arts joining with other already well funded and powerful organisations to keep control of the African theatre scene, edging the little guys out. However, it seems I was needlessly anxious, as this actually seems like a rather wonderful scheme, giving us all access to information and somewhere to meet (both physically and virtually) which could spark off collaborative work. The upshot was that both Michael and I feel it would be a good thing to be members.

After the launch we went in to see Nothing But The Truth, John Kani's play, which was a huge disappointment. Of course his performance was great, as you would expect from one of the foremost actors of his generation, but the play was really awful. Our hearts sank as we took our seats and surveyed the set - an incredibly detailed, realistic box set of an African house with kitchen and living room on view, and doorways to the bedrooms. This immediately signalled that this was to be a traditional, realistic play, and we expected no surprises. Which was lucky, because there certainly were none - the whole thing was completely lacking in tension. Characters moved from kitchen to living room and back again, explaining themselves in minute and tedious detail at all stages and signalling the 'denoument' a long, long time before it came. It was a three hander, but the two young women were so underwritten that we never really got a glimpse of them as real people. One character, an African brought up in England was shallow, irritating and cliched - the actress did a good job with what she had, but didn't have a chance. Political comment was sort of stuck on over the domestic story, although I'm sure the intention was to show that the domestic tragedy sprang from the political situation. I'm afraid I wasn't convinced. All in all a very boring evening - 90 minutes which felt much, much longer.