Review: THE LAST BLACK MESSIAH, Jack Studio Theatre

It seems hardly possible now, but growing up in inner-city Liverpool in the 1970s, one saw very few black people, not in the shops, not at the match, not at school. Sure, everyone knew Muhammad Ali and Viv Richards, we had a hazy knowledge of Martin Luther King Jnr and we all loved Tony Osoba’s bolshie McLaren in Porridge and Don Warrington’s effortlessly cool Philip in Rising Damp. But that was it.

Culture was my route into a hitherto invisible history. Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution will not be Televised”; Alex Hailey’s Roots; and The Gary Byrd Experience’s “The Crown” (which really should be on the curriculum). Later, it was WEB Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (which I read just up the road from this venue at Goldsmiths) and viewing Trevor Noah’s revelatory case for reparations on YouTube. Of course, not every scouse Boomer is as lucky as me.

Emeka Agada (who wrote this new production) plays Dr Oko, a Cornel West type academic on Death Row for seditious acts. The authorities want more though, irrefutable evidence of planned terrorism to rebut the incarceration state’s multiple appeals procedure, so they send in Asante (Kenneth Butler in almost Malcolm X glasses), previously Oko’s star pupil and now a journalist, to wheedle it out of him.   

Much of this two-hander could be lifted from an old school Oxbridge tutorial -  the radical prof argues with a student about their relatively tiny areas of disagreement on policy and action. But Asante is from the generation of Black Americans who have a legitimate aspiration to middle class status, economically if not quite socially. Of course, it would be remiss not to note that such rosy perspectives have retreated into the background for many in the last decade. Oko wants to destroy the system: Asante wants to reform it - and that is the fault line the play explores.

Agada lends his intellectual the gravitas he needs, but, donning the black beret to go back in time, you can see the spirit of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) still bubbling under the surface. His case is made with passion and authority but butts up specifically on the issue of family. Butler shows that the younger man has fire in his belly, but he also has a daughter and that life changing event will always pivot him back to an accommodation with The Man.

The runtime is listed at 70 minutes but ran a little longer on press night. That took the production into a familiar problem for a passion project like this - the all but irresistible urge to overstate the argument. That element of repetition (we already knew Oko had a drug problem and that the hypodermic is a useful weapon if you want to divide black men) served to dissipate the slow burn energy that had been carefully fostered over the play’s first 60 minutes. 

If there are flaws in the pacing and structure, what’s more important is the fact that this new play is staged at all, a testament to this theatre’s willingness to take chances with its programming and to serve all its local community. With a cut or two, I can see this work appearing in schools, linked to important debates about what it means to be free and to the many writers and activists namechecked in the script.

Whether kids need to be protected from social media is a hot button subject just now - that they need more access to contemporary and considered interpretations of history and culture, is surely irrefutable.  

The Last Black Messiah at the Jack Studio Theatre until 16 May

Photo images: Henry HU