Black Love – Roundabout / Paines Plough – Belgrade Theatre, Coventry

Black Love was reviewed at Roundabout/Paines Plough, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Paines Plough’s tourable, flat pack, state of the art, fully accessible theatre is the perfect bubble for Chinonyerem Odimba’s richly layered meditation on Black love, home and sanctuary.

Stepping into a space that feels at once futuristic and retro (there’s more than a hint of a TARDIS in the air) complements the galactic echoes that frame Odimba’s narrative – constellations, time and mysticism shimmer together in the air between brother and sister, both connecting and obstructing their love.

Aurora and Orion are caught between duty, trauma, race and sex as they each try to form their lives away from the expectation of the other, whilst still deeply connected and protective of one another. They live under the shadow of their late parents’ Black love, in the flat where they were created.

Aurora is a tempest – ruthless in the examination of their pain, and defiantly hedonistic, her sex and sensuality an act of activism, of connecting to her ancestry itself. Orion, who holds back his tempest and cannot risk wearing his pain overtly, is bound up in questions of worth, anger, identity – and all the tumult of beginning to identify your own rage and desire amidst trauma.

Leah St Luce gives a proud and vulnerable performance here – always connected, and physically driven – when she sings, her whole body follows, and it’s a joy to feel – not to mention experiencing the waterfall of vocal agility she possesses. Katie Posner and Odimba’s direction lifts the performance skyward.

The beauty of the work is that it doesn’t pose answers – its questions linger, wrapped in compassion for the paradoxes, and the generational trauma that oppression causes. This is certainly a conversation to be listened to.

Nathan Queely-Dennis does a lovely job of humanising the inner struggle as Orion grapples with his self and social conscience. His voice blends beautifully to the music, and is a pleasure to listen to.

Kudos too, to Eleanor Sutton, who treads a very careful line, taking a problematic character without glorifying or demonising her. Indeed, it’s this sliver of humanity which she feeds into her performance which allows us to understand the clashing motivations – it’s more nuanced than a simple good versus evil.

The score, a soulful ode to R’n’B, is beautifully crafted, blending free recitative with standalone numbers. The libretto is brazen and dionysiac at times – at others it bathes in the dissonance of conflict, struggling for resolution. Whether or not this is a definitive musical feels like a question missing the point – Odimba is happy to weave in and out of standard form, and we are better for it.

Intertwined throughout are recordings Odimba has collected from real families expressing what Black Love means to them – it’s a powerful offering each time, and supports the narrative superbly.

It’s an interesting choice though to mic up the voices in this small space – especially with the calibre of vocal talent all three performers possess. Though there is something meta about the ‘performance within a performance’, there may be some deeper exploration of the format to be had.

The end of the play comes abruptly – perhaps where there is no clear resolve outside of the play, there wouldn’t be within, but it did feel somewhat out of the blue – the narrative felt quickly tucked away.

Overall it’s a powerful and very raw expression of the struggle to identify and understand what it means to be a Black family, and to share Black love together.

Aura Simon