There’s no way around it: the full title of this play is going to take up the rest of this paragraph. So, here goes: We are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915.
It’s a title packed with intent and it comes attached to a deceptively playful script from promising young American writer Jackie Sibblies Drury. Her focus is on a well-meaning but self-absorbed group of six young actors trying to devise a piece about the little-known extermination of 80 per cent of the native Herero tribe by their German occupiers. The trouble is that each time our would-be heroes, led by the delightfully bossy Black Woman (Ayesha Antoine) — Sibblies Drury cleverly co-opts her characters’ names into her overall theme — try to stage a scene, they keep tripping themselves up with generalisations and stereotypes.
It doesn’t help that they are basing the work on the letters home of a German soldier, which contain no mentions of any African people.
For all its surface frivolity, peppily directed by Gbolahan Obisesan, the play worries at some profound questions and the discussion becomes heated.
Should the black actors automatically portray the Herero and the white actors the Germans? Is there a secret viper’s nest of prejudice lurking behind our lovely liberal facades? A lengthy and terrifying portion of well-held silence at the end leaves us squirming uncomfortably.
Until Sat Apr 12 (020 8743 5050, bushtheatre.co.uk)
