Blaze FM continues at Pleasance Two at Pleasance Courtyard until 25 August 2025.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩ssss
Blaze FM is a pirate radio station, operating from a block of flats in London, offering a change of narrative and pace from the ‘paid for’ media that disseminate what their paymasters tell them to broadcast rather than what matters to people.
Performing the show in front of back projections that serve to detail the years and top stories identified by mainstream media, the Blaze Family are scratching away on their decks, mixing sounds that create the ground for rapping, in constant fear of being found as they broadcast their own retelling of what’s happening in the world.
The father, Hughbert (Andrew Brown), started the station to bring a Jamaican happier vibe to his district. As the years roll by, his daughter, Aisha (Anais Lone), son Alpha (Aliaano El-Ali), and friends (also brothers) Pritstik (Marcus Reiss) and Jason (Alexander Lobo Moreno), take to the airwaves.
Jason is more interested in interaction and runs a legendary Yes/No game for the audience, but is also a skilled rapper. Pritstik is the star when it comes to rapping and it turns out that his friend, Jay, also develops into a brilliant rapper and delights the Blaze FM audience.
As time passes, their studio equipment moves with the times and the back projections take us through major events across the years. And still the Blaze family continue to broadcast.
Exploring the issues people of colour have to live with every single day, this talented cast ask for and win our hearts and minds. When tragedy strikes, as it inevitably must, the audience begins to understand from the inside out what it means to be viewed as suspicious, or even just inferior, based on skin colour and when clothing choices serve as an added ‘difference’.
A thought-provoking and tight piece of theatre from The Big House company.
Fiona Orr
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.