Gone Too Far! on Tour

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Date	Time	Venue	Notes	Prices	Booking Link
Available Performances
Dates in August
Thu 14 Aug 2008	12:00am		The Albany		Sold Out
Tue 19 Aug 2008	12:00am		Hackney Empire		Sold Out
Sold out Performances

Reviews

4 stars Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, Friday 25 July

In her remarkable debut as a playwright Bola Agbaje walks two teenage black brothers around a dilapidated London Council estate. She exploits their close encounters to give us a jolting lesson about the range of identities, beliefs and anxieties concealed beneath black or blackish skins.

It is a sign of Agbaje’s flair and confidence that Gone too Far!, which premiered at the Court Upstairs last February, principally conveys its message through the contrasting perspectives of two Nigerian males: 16-year-old Yemi has been brought up in London while his 18-year-old brother, Tunji Lucas’s Ikudayisi, has just arrived from Nigeria, where he has lived throughout his youth. He speaks Yoruba, a language of which Yemi knows nothing.

A nice comedy springs from the brothers’ cultural clashes, from Ikudayisi’s attempts to persuade his brother to take some interest and pride in his origins. “Don’t you you have to walk miles in Nigeria to get water?” asks Tobi Bakare’s edgy, shorttempered Yemi – who runs on a short fuse – of the pacific Ikudayisi.

The brothers come up against both conventional prejudices and those of stranger sorts. Conventionally a Muslim shopkeeper bars Yemi from his shop because of the hood the youth regards as his tribal badge. An old lady walks by and takes Ikudayisi’s offer of help as an attempt to rob her.

When, though, the boys fall in with two girls, they are confronted by more serious anxieties. The mixed race, truculent Armani (Zawe Ashton) ranks Africans as ugly inferiors to West Indians but is revealed by her blacker friend. Paris, as someone who wears her Jamaican identity as a mere fashion accessory. Marcus Onilude’s super-cool leading man Blazer, by revealing his own Nigerian roots to Yemi, convinces him to take pride in being Nigerian.

Beijan Sheibani’s vivacious production lacks a sense of location but is superlatively animated by outstanding young actors who bring a rare sense of spontaneity, comedy and emotional conviction to a play that urges Blacks to stand together rather than fall apart. 4 stars Benedict Nightingale, Times, Wednesday 30 July

Bola Agbaje’s Gone Too Far!, with its portrait of black-on-black conflict on an inner-city estate, seemed pretty topical when early last year it emerged from the Royal Court’s Young Writers Programme for a brief stint at the Theatre Upstairs. Now it’s even more so. After all, a knife is pulled, a stabbing occurs and for a moment it seems that death will follow.

Yet what’s impressive about Agbaje’s debut play is that, despite the odd lapse into caricature, it has the unpredictability that comes from first-hand observation. Here it’s not simply a matter of Stepney Sharks or Capulets at war with Limehouse Jets or Montagues. There are more black teenagers trying to keep the peace than break it. The fight that passing coppers righteously try to stop is actually horseplay between brothers. The old lady who squawks in terror when the same pair approach her isn’t being mugged but awkwardly helped.

Both these brothers are of Nigerian origin, but the more recent arrival, Tunji Lucas’s Ikudayisi, is tall and pacific while the longer-term resident, Tobi Bakare’s Yemi, is small, combative, streetwise in speech and style. But both are mistrusted, even derided as jungle animals by some of those whose background is West Indian, and above all by Zawe Ashton’s brilliantly played Armani: a loud, brash, insecure 15-year-old forever looking for slights from African boys and trying to get her man to avenge them.

What’s refreshing is that, in yet another reversal of of expectation, Ashley Chin’s ominously named Razer responds to these bloodthirsty urgings and Armani’s threats to leave him with a bored, Go then, go find a man better than me. There’s nothing sentimental about Agbaje’s writing – that big girl’s blouse, Ikudayisi, is genuinely endangered and does indeed get robbed of the smart trainers he’s wearing – but it does leave you feeling that tabloid paranoia is preventing us from observing, understanding, and sometimes appreciating the complexity of life on those sink estates.

Indeed, there are hoods and hoodies galore in Bijan Sheibani’s production, at times inciting us to react like the Asian shopkeeper who hysterically bars the Nigerian brothers from his shop when all they want to do is obey their fierce mother by buying some milk. And here’s the conclusion of this sometimes raw, always talented play. Don’t necessarily hug a hoody. But look farther than the hood and see the person beneath.

Gone To Far!

4 stars Michael Coveney, Tuesday 29 July

After its short run in Sloane Square, Bola Agbajes Gone Too Far! winner of an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre goes on to play a few performances next month at the Albany in Deptford and the Hackney Empire. It will therefore have a chance to reach audiences for whom it is specifically targeted.

This is important. Agbajes first play appeared in the Courts Upstairs theatre in February 2007 director Bijan Sheibani has assembled exactly the same cast — as a result of a specific project to raise new black voices within the Young Writers Programme. It is an immensely vivid piece about national identity among a group of street kids on a South London estate.

In some ways this is West Side Story writ small without music except for the snake-like hoodie dance sequences with inter-racial strife and a dangerous knife, and it is definitely about status in relation to your peers and your roots. Roots and weaves: black African Paris (Bunmi Mojekwu) taunts her attitude-rich half-white Jamaican friend Armani (Zawe Ashton) with the reminder that she taught her about her weaves and moves.

The ninety-minute plays axis spins on the renewed relationship between two brothers: British Nigerian Yemi (Tobi Bakare), working hard at his street credibility and cool exterior, and his taller, older brother Ikudayisi (Tunji Lucas) lately returned from school in Nigeria, mixing his native Yoruba with some misguidedly appropriated Americanisms.

The boys are sent out to buy milk by an offstage yelling mother the comedy of this, like some of the close contact confrontations, does not work quite so well on the larger stage and are caught up in local action. Eventually, an unserious fraternal scuffle is broken up by comedy policemen over-briefed on the acceleration of black on black violence.

In the plays funniest scene, the brothers are barred No hoodies! from a grocers shop by a skullcap-wearing Bangladeshi British nationalist, and then a timid white OAP (Maria Charles), shredded with misplaced fear, crosses the stage and drops all her vegetables.

Motor mouth, fairly stupid Armani brilliantly done by a non-stop, flagrantly physical Zawe Ashton keeps the argumentative pot boiling; at one point, the stage dynamic is similar to the lovers tiff scene in A Midsummer Nights Dream. And Yemis concluding statement of cultural compromise in robes and baseball cap is both eloquent and optimistic.

4 stars Caroline McGinn, Time Out, Monday 4th August

Bola Agbajes first play, first seen Upstairs at the Royal Court, has plenty of mouth and plenty of attitude. Set among a group of youts on a south London estate, its a comic sometimes farcical series of face-offs, pumped up by intra-racial conflicts and the anxiety and bravado of being a teenager. First up are brothers Yemi

(a cocky 16-year-old homegrown Londoner) and Ikudayisi (his 18-year-old Yoruba-speaking older brother who has recently shown up from Nigeria). In scene one they fail, hilariously, to keep up the body-poppingly humiliating punishment moves their mother has set them to do. So she sends them out to buy a pint of milk instead, cueing a series of charged encounters (with a Muslim shopkeeper their racially mixed-up peers and the police) in which hoodie Yemi (Tobi Bakare) demands respect while Ikudayisi (Tunji Lucas) is the peacemaking innocent abroad.

Bijan Sheibanis production has a hyped up physical and visual language which suggests a slightly down-at-heel, keepin-it-real music video. In slo-mo sequences between the scenes, the protagonists close down on each other and sinuously gyrate or square up, giving body to the aggressive sexual and social energies which burst out of the slang-flecked, swinging script. The acting is bang on. Zawe Ashton is unbearably convincing as loose-cannon Armani, the mixed-up, mixed-race, ponytail-swinging wannabe rudegirl whose bad attitude and loose mouth create the needless (and potentially tragic) showdown. And Bakare finds moments of introspection and dignity in Yemi before he goes too far defending his brother. Agbajes play overworks its issues, and the back-to-back conflicts in the short scenes give it a choppy feel. But it remains a sparky, hugely promising and entertaining all-rounder. 4 stars Emma Smith, The Sunday Times, Sunday 10th August

Bola Agbaje reportedly wrote to Gordon Brown, inviting him to see this, her first play, suggesting that it might teach him something about young black Britain and knife crime. Sadly, the prime minister was too busy looking uncomfortable in Southwold to take up the 27-year-olds offer. It might have put a smile on his face: for, though the theme may not scream comic potential, this play is very funny, while never losing sight of its serious desire to tell the truth about its subject. The play uses the slenderest plot two black teenagers cross a London estate to buy milk to explore the complex allegiances and adolescent vulnerabilities that lie behind the clich of the knife-wielding hoodie. In the final moments, after 90 minutes of simmering tension, Agbaje pulls back from the obvious denouement, and she is blessed with a cast who understand that her humour springs from naturalistic performances, rather than playing it for laughs. The play was first seen in the Jerwood in February, won an Olivier award and ended its Royal Court run last night. But its moving on, Mr Brown, if youre interested.

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