Naima Khan reviews Cardboard Citizens' information heavy play about the universal search for identity.
Adrian Jackson's A Few Man Fridays unfurls logically like an encyclopaedia chapter on the expulsion of Chagossians from their archipelago – sold by the British to the Americans in 1967. It weaves in loss of identity, colonisation, slavery, legislation, environmental issues and personal histories through video footage, music and dance in a multi-layered stage design by Fred Meller. But it is so dense with information that the evocative nature of the subject matter falls flat, and the play desperately seeks a sustained structure.
It finds one in the second half when the protagonist Prosper, an angry soul lost in London, tells Kirsty Young – an uncannily good Nicholas Khan – about the Desert Island Discs that link him to his Chagossian ancestry in a format that serves its purpose and strikes a chord with its audience, the one on press night anyway. Its scope is also impressive. While it is rooted in the troubles of the almost homeless Prosper (this being a Cardboard Citizens production) it reaches far beyond the story of its protagonist to deal with something both universal and historical, the legacy of which continues to effect displaced people today.
But too often A Few Man Fridays falls back on Prosper's sessions with his therapist to provide a convenient question-and-answer format that allows him to return from hours in the library loaded with new information to deliver. And this is only one strand of a three-hour-long play (including interval) that introduces us to this troubled therapist, her conservationist husband, his agenda-driven organisation, the political figures it deals with and the Chagossians themselves, as well as the historical decision-makers who drew on Robinson Crusoe's colonialist term to describe the natives they were evicting.
But it does utilise such literary inspiration excellently and points at examples of colonialist attitude still prevalent today. In two particularly good scenes Jackson reveals the faces behind the confidently anonymous voices that post comments on sites like Youtube and the well-meaning yachties who are comfortably in awe of their surroundings. While the play might be long and poorly structured, there's a lot for the audience to feast their eyes on and the constantly changing tone and pace ensures that we are rarely bored.
A Few Man Fridays runs at Riverside Studios until 10th March
Image by Alastair Muir
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