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Show: STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey
Society: London (professional shows)
Venue: Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. The Mall, St. James's, London SW1Y 5AH
Credits: By Mojisola Adebayo. Direction by Gail Babb and S. Ama Wray, musical direction by Debo Adebayo, projected animation by Candice Purwin. A Tamasha and ICA co-production
Type: Sardines
Author: John London
Performance Date: 18/04/2023
STARS: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey
John London | 19 Apr 2023 18:37pm
Photo: Ali Wright
With a stunning Shakespearean retelling staged in Coventry last year (Nothello) and an award-winning play now touring (Family Tree), Mojisola Adebayo is riding a bit of wave. So what better title for her present offering than Stars? It’s just that the subtitle encapsulates both the literal and imagined journey which is nothing to do with celebrity: An Afrofuturist Space Odyssey.
A woman called simply Mrs goes to her local GP: all she wants is an orgasm before she dies. And so we accompany her on her search. There’s her deceased husband (Mr) whose ashes she feeds to the goldfish (itself standing in for her cat). Judging by the way he treated her, he deserves a much harsher fate. On comes her son, now a DJ and music producer but ashamed by the way she still calls him Mikey. We see her parents who brought her up a Catholic, although she is temporarily drawn to the Evangelicals who try to purify her. Scholars discuss the genius of African cosmology. Her friend Shahana introduces her to lesbian experience. The local butcher’s wife tells Mrs about her own supposed physical abnormality. And a Muslim girl, Maryam, regularly pops in to use the toilet and enthuse about the planets.
So far so direct and there are moments when the protest overwhelms or becomes the drama. Perhaps that’s hard to avoid when you’re dealing with racism, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation, gender repression, and non-consensual surgery performed on intersex children. (A press night audience shouted out support against the latter, particularly when given a Caribbean twist.) But this is above all theatre, an extended poetic monologue of self-discovery. Apart from the occasional interventions by DJ Son Mikey (Bradley Charles), usually to introduce the music played continously, the only performer we see act on stage is Debra Michaels.
Michaels narrates, sings, talks to other characters, then acts them, as well as speaking to herself and to us. You can enter her world as she reads the newspaper article: ‘Government plans to send refugees into space. First came Brexit, now – Spexit: Space exit… whether you are a migrant, exile or adventurous expat.’ She adopts all the accents: posh RP, Irish, Jamaican, generic West African, Blackburn, Cockney, Feddie Mercury, David Bowie, and Tom Hanks (‘Houston, we have a problem’). It’s a tour de force, so you end up inevitably associating the genuine tribulations of Mrs with the sheer interpretative pressure with which Michaels is coping.
There’s help on hand, though, in the backwall projections. All the dialogue appears written out as said (even if it is not followed exactly, which is a little distracting). Candice Purwin’s wonderful animations are at once Maryam’s drawings, but also an independent set of visual meditations on the myths and ideas within the play, sketching them out and developing them. That means it’s easier to go along with Mrs as she climbs onto her washing machine (where there’s more technology than the 1957 Sputnik), says she’ll ‘take the Gs’ (cleverly combining aviation with sexual body parts), and tries to push herself up to space (or another experience out of this world). And if none of that works, there’s always the intended dance party after the show.