Gone Too Far! ( Archived )

Reviews

3 stars 3 Stars

Sam Marlowe – The Times – 8th February 2007

Bola Agbaje’s debut play, Gone Too Far!, was developed under the Royal Court’s Young Writers Programme. Her 90-minute drama has plenty of imperfections: it’s structurally flawed, blunt, and the characterisation lacks complexity. But it has a joyous, irreverent energy and a fresh, winning playfulness.

This week the Court’s new artistic director, Dominic Cooke, outlined his first season, shaped by a three-plank policy comprising international work, an expanded developmental process, and a commitment to first-time writers. Agbaje is one of the six emergent playwrights to benefit from the latter.

Her subject is urban multicultural Britain, her territory not unlike that explored in the plays of Roy Williams. She shares that writer’s knack for capturing the rhythms and power shifts of teenage street chat emphasised, in Bijan Sheibani’s arresting production by pumping inter-scene dance sequences.

Set on a South London housing estate, the play probes the tensions among the area’s black youth.

Yemi and Ikudayisi are Nigerian brothers, but Yemi, brought up in Britain, prefers to adopt what he perceives as a cooler and less conspicuous West Indian persona among his peers. Ikudayisi claims to be proud to be African, but puts on a faux US accent in company. The tough-talking, secretly insecure Armani (Zawe Ashton) – her very name, with its Italian fashion resonance, suggestive of cultural confusion – is of mixed race and has never visited Jamaica, but insists she’s “from yard”. They all demand “respect”, but for all their bravado and the insults they trade, they desperately want to fit in.

At its unforced best, Agbaje’s dialogue is alive to the political implications of the seemingly least significant exchange, but elsewhere it is often heavy-handedly polemic, particularly when the unconvincing character of Blazer, the estate’s well-dressed, well-read 18-year-old main man (Marcus Onilude), turns up to deliver a lecture to his fractious mates on social history. Agbaje also occasionally descends into caricature, with two doltish white policemen clashing with Yemi and a scared elderly lady eyeing the two brothers with trepidation as she scuttles home with her shopping.

And overall, the play needs more action and less talk; but for all its rough edges, it’s a sparky piece of work that oozes promise. 3 stars 3 stars

Lyn Gardner – The Guardian, 9th February 2007

For south London teenager Yemi and his elder brother, Ikudayisi – recently arrived from Nigeria – popping out for a pint of milk into the concrete walkways of the local estate becomes an odyssey that gets right under the skin of multi-cultural Britain.

The Royal Court Young Writers festival have scored again with Bola Agbaje’s debut, a comedy that asks: how do we know who we are in modern Britain? Like the play itself, Bijan Sheibani’s beautifully acted production takes a little while to find its confidence and style, but when it does it lifts the lid on the lives of teenagers whose confusions are not so much hormonal as the product of an identity crisis, the pressure of street rivalries, and the fact that Africans and West Indians have little understanding of their shared history.

Racism takes many forms here. There are odd scenes – such as an encounter with the police – that don’t quite come off, but for most of the evening the production rings true, whether it is the gobby insecurities of the mixed-race Armani (Zawe Ashton, very good), who wants to pick a fight with anyone she thinks doesn’t give her due respect, or the reaction of the elderly white woman whose expectations are so low that when Ikudayisi offers her a seat to rest she is convinced he intends to mug her.

James Cotterill’s nifty design turns the entire theatre upstairs into a soulless concrete wasteland, and in an outstanding cast, Tobi Baker and Tunji Lucas are engaging as the brothers negotiating their differences and discovering what they share and who they are. 4 stars 4 stars

Rachel Halliburton – Time Out, 13th of February 2007

Warmth and sharp irreverence animate this first play by young writer Bola Agbaje, which turns its playful focus on the way teens define themselves in multicultural Britain. The action revolves around a comic relationship between Yemi, born in Britain, and Ikudayisi, born in Nigeria – two brothers who simply go to a corner shop to buy some milk, yet find their identities challenged by everyone from a petrified pensioner to a truculent half-Jamaican.

This is the first full production in this year’s Royal Court Young Writers’ Programme, and it is served well by director Bijan Sheibani’s exuberant interpretation. The Jerwood Theatre Upstairs has been transformed into a theatre in the round, with two tiers of stone-coloured benches – so that ironically, in the week that new artistic director Dominic Cooke has announced the Royal Court’s greater focus on the middle classes, it feels like we’re sitting in a council-estate yard.

Tunji Lucas’s goofy giant Ikudayisi may be the elder and taller of the two brothers, but hes not as streetwise as Yemi, and while he preaches about being in touch with his Nigerian roots, he often lapses into an America accent. Yemi seems incapable of keeping out of trouble: he accuses a Bangladeshi shopkeeper of concealing a bomb factory, and lashes out at a half-Jamaican girl called Armani (a dynamic Zawe Ashton) when she mouthily dismisses him for being African.

After the controversy surrounding Jade Goody’s behaviour in ‘Big Brother’, its fascinating to sit in a largely black audience and hear the roars of laughter as the teenagers trade insults for ignorance.

Agabje’s is a young and sometimes immature voice, but her humanity and ear for snappy dialogue bodes well for a bright revealing future.

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