Review: DEEP AZURE, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

While most people knew Chadwick Boseman for his blockbuster appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as T’Challa/Black Panther, the actor was also a playwright and director. His early career was spent treading the boards in New York, where he became a Drama League Directing Fellow at 24 years old in 2000. His most celebrated play is now premiering in the UK 21 two decades after its American debut.

Written in lyrical verse with direct references to the Shakespearean structure, it brings hip-hop to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. It’s a treat to see something so modern and pertinent to our times being staged on the cloistered stage, but the piece is frantically overlong and unfocused. There’s lots to love, but it ultimately doesn’t satisfy.

When Deep is murdered by a rogue policeman, his fiancée Azure is left bereft and reeling. Consumed by the hallucinations caused by her eating disorder, she makes it her life's mission to bring justice to his name. Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu (For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy) shares a peculiar vision. The chorus is made up of a weird gaggle of robots-slash-aliens-slash-futuristic-humanoids that have nothing to do with anything. Whether we’re supposed to accept the story as a cautionary tale told by the entities of tomorrow or whatever else, it is not known.

Dramaturgically speaking, this group should lead the narrative, but they quickly become a hindrance. It adds quirk and flair to an otherwise exceedingly traditional setup, but doesn’t ultimately fit the image as a whole, and their interludes regularly overstay their welcome. Aminita Francis (SK Good) and Imani Yahshua (SK Evil) control the protagonists (Selina Jones as Azure, Elijah Cook as Tone, Justice Ritchie as Roshad), manipulating them cruelly, while Deep (Jayden Elijah) lurks around like a peaceful apparition. The ensemble is often used to break the tension and add a comic slant, for example when they become pigeons (yeah, we don’t know what to say either…).

The writing is the strongest area. The language is researched and controlled, finding its pace in the rhymes and assonances of its turns of phrase. It’s generally sophisticated and eloquent, but the dialogue tends to sound the same regardless of the character who speaks it. Boseman alternates prose and poetry, both equally refined. While the quality of the script is overall great, it slips into some wild choices that are corny and overwrought. Though the result might echo Shakespeare in its impression, it comes off as trying too hard. Nonetheless, the elevated register of the text brings weight to the story and presents it as a universal, epic tragedy.

Deep Azure is a direct indictment of police brutality and the failure of the American justice system. It should focus on that, but it also tries to be a commentary on societal pressure on women and the dangers of eating disorders. It’s unnecessary and distracting from the central point of the plot, which is already treated rather thinly. Racially motivated crime is the background that allows the police force to act upon their own prejudices. It would be exciting for that to transpire more steadily. Another interesting detail that could be exploited more is Tone’s being a Fugitive Recovery Agent (essentially a bounty hunter), which Azure can’t reconcile with his cultural identity.

Everything considered, this is a disappointing production. While the play is stylistically substantial, with its use of poetry and ethereal harmonies, its contents and their delivery fall short. The multiple moments of reckoning (Azure’s pain, Deep’s mother’s harangue, Tone’s addresses against the system) are swallowed by the baffling tonal shifts as well as the overly extended and irrelevant interruptions. Trimming it by at least half an hour would firm up its results and let the already impressive performances settle on more solid ground. As it is, the negative aspects of the project drag the positives down irreparably. The themes are (unfortunately) ever relevant and pertinent, but that's not enough to make this a success.

Deep Azure runs at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until 11 April