Review: THE LONG ROAD SOUTH, King's Head Theatre, January 15 2016

That there are many ways for a production to fail to deliver all of its promise can exasperate reviewers and creatives alike, but there are also many ways for a production to do the opposite, and make something really special from somewhat unprepossessing material. I confess that the thought of watching another family bickering set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement in the USA of the 1960s did not put a skip in my stride as I braced against January's chill, but Paul Minx's play, developed from its 2014 run, confounded expectations with a real punch from the word go.

It's late August 1965 and Lolitaish teen Ivy is flirting with Andre, a black man hired as gardener and to coach Ivy for her upcoming Bible verse reciting contest. But Grace, the maid and Andre's lover, is fired up by a college education and unfolding events in Alabama, and she's pressing Andre to join her in marching with Dr King and thousands more. Meanwhile Carol Ann, Ivy's mother, is swigging the gin and ignoring the advances of her husband, Jake, who rails against a world that he believes is turning against the middle-class white man.

Given a sharp and spare script, each actor is instantly credible in their roles (despite them being types as much as persons). Cornelius Macarthy brings a quiet soulfulness to Andre, the moral centre of the story, without ever letting us forget that the violence done to him in word and deed (and to all black people) could be met with violence of his own, if his conscience allowed. Krissi Bohn's Grace is disdainful and impatient, a woman whose attitudes are not, like Andre's, set by the long history of black servitude, but look towards an emerging future - psychologically, she is already on the long walk to freedom, even if she is stuck in Indiana.

Imogen Stubbs' ageing lush veers close to caricature, the bottle never out of arm's reach, but her decency peeps through the bad parenting and the racism often enough for us to see a good person gone astray, the easy options of the booze and spending her husband's money, drowning out the others. Michael Brandon's Jake has few of his wife's redeeming features, the most conservative and unreconstructed of the five characters and yet, in these days when Donald Trump polls strongly, also the most 21st century too - a warning that the white middle-aged man's sense of entitlement runs deep. Lydea Perkins may be a little older than Ivy, but she captures the girl's confused feelings well, alternating between a desire for the adult life of freedom and sex and the child's mindset of egocentric vindictiveness. It's a very fine performance holding its own amongst four others of similar quality.

The Long Road South (at the Kings Head Theatre until 30 January) may exploit one of drama's oldest formulas - take some people, trap them, create conflict - and it does it very well indeed. But you don't need to take my word for it, because it passes one of fringe theatre's most authentic tests - at one or two key moments when the tension was at its highest, some in the audience clearly gasped. And I know, because, somewhat to my surprise, I was one of them.

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