Kim's Convenience: A Love Letter To The First Generation
Plus All Blood Is Red (Review) and The Best Of The Rest Mar 8-14
As South Korean culture continues its onward march to global domination, Netflix star James Yi arrives in Leeds this week in charge of everybody’s favourite local store. He is joined by Caroline Donica as his on-stage daughter Janet in a universal tale of family, tradition and generational change. Ins Choi’s play, which premiered in Toronto in 2011, became a successful Netflix comedy series starring Yi and has won several awards. Leeds Playhouse, Mar 12-15, £15-£35, York Theatre Royal, Jun 16-21, £15-£43.
All Blood Runs Red: Review
Decorated First World War flying ace Eugene Jacques Bullard was born on October 9, 1895, in Columbus, Georgia, USA. He was the seventh of 10 children to William Bullard, a former slave of African and Haitian descent, and Josephine Thomas, of Creek Indian and African-American heritage. Growing up in the segregated South, Bullard fled racial violence as a child and, after a short spell as a racing jockey, made his way to Europe by stowing away on a German ship.
They put him ashore at Aberdeen, now reasonably fluent in German, and he travelled to Liverpool. There he crossed paths with world-class heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson — the first Black man to hold that title. He gave such a good account of himself that he formed part of the fighter’s entourage when he travelled to Paris.
Paris was always Bullard’s objective — his partly Haitian ancestry had led him to understand he would be freer there. In this, he was correct. He had a short spell as a prize fighter and then, when the First World War broke out, joined the French Foreign Legion and fought as a gunner. When incapacitated for further military service at the Battle of Verdun, he enrolled in the Aéronautique Militaire instead. He got his wings in May 1917 — the only Afro-American to do so in that war.
Actor Morgan Bailey’s re-telling of Bullard’s extraordinary life — which later included a stint using his secret knowledge of the German language to spy on the Nazis — is not straightforward. It opens in contemporary Paris, with Bailey sitting in a famous restaurant waiting for two London friends to join him for lunch. He is in Paris because he has secured a speaking part in a French film, playing a 1950s American GI stationed in France.
The story slips backwards and forwards between the two timelines as Bailey reflects on his experience playing a fictional black character shaped by a white person’s imagination, and the forgotten reality of Bullard.
The night I saw it, technically the world premiere, felt like a dress rehearsal. Bailey dried a few times and called for his lines; some of the lighting wasn’t there yet. And, in the absence of a fourth wall, I felt he could have toyed with his audience a little more — and probably will, once he relaxes into the performance.
But for all that, it was powerful stuff. Spectacular multi-media effects courtesy of ‘imitating the dog’ were integrated seamlessly with the performance to generate images of old-fashioned bi-planes and pre-war nightclubs. Original footage of superstar Josephine Baker, a friend and possibly lover of Bullard, showed her dancing with exaggerated facial grimaces and rolling eyes. Set on a seemingly endless loop in the background, it sent a powerful but unspoken message about what white folks in those days expected from their black entertainers.
A handful of memory lapses didn’t visibly affect Bailey’s confidence — ironically enough, when one recurring theme was his own self-doubt. Faced with finding inner coherence for his film character, he felt it was written to be instrumental to a French adult fantasy rather than to have a truthful interior life.
A throwaway line that was, in reality, a deeply upsetting reminder of the horrors of Jim Crow brought him into principled conflict with his film director. Bailey wanted not to alter the line but simply to give it a weight and seriousness that honoured the character’s likely history. Instead, 100 years on from Bullard’s Roaring 20s Paris, he felt he was still being pressured into a more subtle version of Baker’s early minstrel act.
Yet it was a qualm to which the inspiring Bullard, always ready to take his opportunities in the world as he found it, would have given short shrift — as Bailey ultimately makes clear in his ingenious final showdown between Bullard’s character and himself.
Bailey could have created a show that put the gripping adventure story of Bullard’s life firmly front and centre. For that, you’ll have to read his biography. Instead, he’s more interested in how French culture, to an extent, permitted him to exist as a character and a history, but American culture didn’t.
At the end, the applause came within a whisker of becoming a standing ovation. Outside in the corridor I passed director Tyrone Huggins with a grin on his face. All Blood Runs Red is a hit in the making and he knew it. CAST, Doncaster, Mar 11 & 12, £12 & £16.
The Best Of The Rest, Mar 8-14
There are a couple of big revivals on mainstages in Yorkshire this week:
Northern Ballet’s Jane Eyre was created by Cathy Marston in 2016, based on Charlotte Bronte’s novel. Rising costs last year forced them to replace their Sinfonia with a freelance model for their musicians which gives the company more hiring flexibility — but which falls heavily on individual artists. Let’s hope Jane Eyre’s 2025 iteration (with live music) is a reliable banker for the company, which will enable them to incorporate live, rather than recorded, music in as many other productions as possible. Grand Theatre, Leeds, Mar 14-22, £23-£82, Sheffield Lyceum, Apr 22-26, £15-£56.50, plus nationally.
The other revival is Sheffield Theatre’s A Streetcar Named Desire, which this time round has beautiful Joanne Vanderham as Blanche, the mentally disintegrating Southern Belle who takes refuge with her sister and her sister’s brutish husband. Tennessee Williams’s play is a classic both of American theatre and cinema. Crucible, Sheffield, to Mar 29, £15-£43.
Smaller Stages
We don’t usually associate Greek tragedy with clowning. Medea, by Euripedes, tells of a witch who takes inexcusable revenge on her husband, Jason, when he abandons her for a younger woman. It’s a horrific story. Yet April Small achieves the impossible — she turns heartbreak into comedy in a show, Bloody Medea!!!, she developed in conjunction with Aitor Basauri of Spymonkey during those strange days of lockdown when we were all a little mad. Harrogate Studio Theatre, Mar 8, £14.
Education, Education, Education in Scarborough sees the Stephen Joseph Theatre’s Young Company revisit The Wardrobe Ensemble’s pre-pandemic play about schooling in the pre-phone 1990s. A nostalgia-fest of Blair, Britpop and Tamagotchis, its big question about what education is actually for hasn’t got any less urgent in the artificial intelligence era. The Round, Mar 11-15, £10 & £14.
Everyone Means Everyone…
Such idiocies have been perpretrated in the name of ‘inclusivity’ that I go into nervous spasm when anyone says the word. In the hands of thickos, it seems often to mean the exact opposite.
But genuine inclusivity is, of course, an admirable thing. I once, when travelling in France, ate lunch at a small Norman town’s best restaurant. (It was my gift to myself for surviving a lot of things.) In came a gaggle of learning-disabled people with their carers — some of them clearly had severe issues. Nevertheless, they all sat in the sunny courtyard having a good lunch together, enjoying the tastes, smells, dappled sunlight and general vibe.
I can’t imagine in a million years that happening in the UK. But at least we have Frozen Light Theatre Company. The Ancient Oak Of Baldor is a multi-sensory experience for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities and their companions. It’s a tale about the interconnectedness of all things. The Leeds show is sold out, and so is the one at Mind The Gap, Bradford, but you might catch it at CAST, Doncaster, on May 9, £13, or at one of the other shows nationally.
“The world is changed by the women you push too far”
Finally, with themes that recall those of Morgan Bailey in All Blood Runs Red, there is Chopped Liver & Unions at Ropery Hall, Barton-on-Humber. (Technically, Barton is in North Lincolnshire, but it’s my newsletter and I get to decide. Anyway, it’s easily accessible via the Humber Bridge.) Sara Wesker was playwright Arnold Wesker’s aunt, and he based the character of Sarah in Chicken Soup With Barley on her. But her real significance was as an active trade unionist in London’s East End. Now all but forgotten, she successfully campaigned to improve the lot of female garment workers, sat on the Central Committee of the Communist Party and fought at the anti-Black Shirt ‘Battle of Cable Street’.
Written by JJ Leppink, directed by Laura Killeen, and with Lottie Walker as Sara Wesker, it is produced by Bluefire Theatre Co in association with Giles Shenton Productions. It commemorates a major figure on the left who successfully unionised a swathe of the female workforce but got little credit for it. Mar 13, £14 & £16.
What a radical edition this has turned out to be! Remember that by clicking the purple links you can easily find the booking page for the shows I highlight.
God willing, I’ll be back in midweek with tales of my recent trip to Bradford to see a fascinating play, A Teaspoon of Shampoo, about a fraudulent NHS doctor who practised successfully in the city for 30 years.
Liz x
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