As the Mother of a Brown Boy (review)
- Chichenshed production, Northcott Theatre, Exeter, Saturday May 10
posted by Cptn
Towards the end of As the Mother of a Brown Boy, mother Karen Niering talks about not knowing she would only share 19 years with her son, Mischa. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but then that’s family life and it’s called growing up. That Mischa should die before the end of that journey is the tragedy the performance investigates.
The spoken voices of the mother and the coroner’s report are punctuated by big beats, soul, rap and a good use of audio, including an excerpt of the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which skillfully marks the growing claustrophobia.
The dance flows around cubes - the cast move in, through and around the compartments that we all inhabit, sometimes created by ourselves, sometimes by others. At one time the boxes act as the impenetrable wall of bureaucracy and the boxes to tick, at others they become the physical and emotional barriers of life.
Mischa was marked out as an over-achiever at 12. By 19 he’d died as a result of a police chase following a failed raid on Tiffany’s in London.
It’s a moving experience. Mischa was a member of Chickenshed and plenty of the cast were his friends, his aunt Christine Niering directed the play and David Rubine, who plays Mischa’s father in the production, was Micha’s Godfather. And it is the mother’s voice which offers the diary of Mischa’s life. But there’s also a distance, possibly enforced – was are observers to this life and grief, after all.
As the press release says: “Chickenshed is passionate in the belief that Mischa’s death should not be in vain. We are telling his story the ways that is was: the decisions he made and the paths he took, not always the right choices but not always actual choices either. We hope that Mischa’s story will encourage others to question the undercurrents of discrimination and subtlety of racism in society and give a voice to those involved in the pursuit of justice.”
This is the story of a life, and the story of a life lost. Not another statistic and not another tick in a box.
If you liked this story, you could buy us a coffee --------------------------------------------------------------------May 11th, 2008
