THEATRE REVIEW 2024
mulatto boy
omnibus THEATRE
★★★★★
Sometimes the simple decisions we make can have a profound impact on our lives, even challenging the very fabric of who we think we are. For Huvi, that decision was wanting to propose to his girlfriend in Malta. Hotel, booked. Flights are booked. The only thing he’s lacking is a passport, and though born in London, on applying, he discovers that his mother, an Angolan refugee, never registered him when he was born, meaning he now has to apply for British citizenship, which is inevitably rejected. As Huvi tries to reconcile with the situation, it allows him to explore his mother’s history, the sacrifices she made coming to England, and what this means to him now.
Prelude: the lights go down, and as a voice breaks the silence, we hear a high court judge, Nick Wray, reading his verdict. Lights come up, and from the moment we meet Huvi, playwright/performer Edi De Melo, there is a feeling of significance; it’s emotional watching De Melo open his show as Tunji Lucas, Griot, Huvi’s spiritual guide, creates sounds from a Djembe drum and Shekere, his gaze never leaving De Melo. There is a bond already forged between the two, which feels electric. As he stands in the centre of a large circle, De Melo allows his audience to feel his confusion, awkwardness, and uncertainty. This moment is captured perfectly by Harriet White’s lighting design, which transports the audience to this foreign, unknown place with its strange sounds, traditions, and language.
Every word within Mulatto Boy comes from a place of truth. This is the type of truth that can only come from a genuine place of experience and knowledge, a place of pain and rebirth. There is a rhythmic beauty that De Melo forges with his text that is, at times, performed in verse, which adds a salient dimension to the piece. Each word is spoken from deep within his soul, a soul that has found its calling. You feel the urgency and power that these words have. They are deeply personal and are designed to be impactful. How would anyone react to being told that after being born and raised in a country your entire life you have to leave? Huvi is British. He was born in London; he supports England; every sense of himself is that he is British. But really, what does it mean to be British? Can anyone say that they’re truly British? The Royal Family themselves come from German and Greek stock.
But there is something deeper and more painful in Huvi’s search for his identity, and it’s one that a lot of mixed-race people encounter, not black enough for some and not light enough for others. Being caught in this in-between place is like purgatory, a repetitive cycle they can’t get out of. How can young mixed-race men like Huvi discover who they are when there is so much noise around their existence from all sides? De Melo brilliantly illustrates this as Huvi reflects on a football match in high school, whites against blacks. Showing how early Huvi was made to feel othered, as the constant sniping at the foundations of his identity doesn’t just damage his pride but could lead to breaking his spirit.
Huvi’s lived experiences include all the micro-aggressions, the subtle and not-so-subtle racism, the ever-present ignorance of people, and that line that only mixed-race people can understand, but you’re not really black. As Mulatto Boy progresses, the audience is drawn deeper into Huvi’s world and experiences, and you feel this weight of guilt, shame, and confusion of a young man who simply wants to understand who he is and where he belongs. No matter how much he tries to fit in, to assimilate to the codes, rules, and culture, he remains an outsider. This has created a guilt that has been placed on the skin of mixed-race people who continually find it harder to find where they belong.
"I’ve not seen many debut productions that have the level of insight, thoughtfulness, pain, and resilience quite like Mulatto Boy."
Some people might be comfortable with certain labels, but others, notably those within the mixed-race community, have a hard time finding a label that sticks. The debate over colourism has been raging since at least 2018 and is still a subject that’s not fully discussed within our social, cultural, or political communities which is places them in this sort of limbo.
As we search for identity, people within the African diaspora have to wrestle with the generations before them who had been forced to abandon some of their traditions in order to assimilate into their new foreign way of life. It is when Huvi talks about his mother and flashes back to the journey she was forced to take from Angola that we get to see just what level of sacrifices are made by those forced to flee their homes.
Walking across Clapham Common after the show, I smiled as I remembered a line in the play when Huvi talked about eating gari, a fine to coarse granular flour made from cassava roots, and it made me think of my Nigerian stepfather. Once a week he would cook hot pepper soup that we would eat with gari. We’d sit in the front room on these tiny wooden stools surrounded by carved masks from his village; sometimes he’d play modern African music that to us sounded like one long song. We’d dip the gari in the tomato-based soup that had been turned orange due to the amount of pepper he'd put in it, fishing out the okra or shrimp, all whilst trying to suppress the hotness of the soup and our burning lips with ice-cold milk, or occasionally lemonade, much to our chagrin. Our hot pepper soup days were the only African tradition I remember from my stepfather. I used to love watching him make it. He would use this thick, wooden pole to mix the gari, which, once fully cooked, becomes immovable; imagine thick mashed potatoes. Only now am I able to feel comfortable connecting to the African side of my identity without fear of being rejected. The back and forth I faced about what group I belong to no longer weighs on my mind, and I no longer feel any guilt about identifying as mixed-race.
Theatre has changed a lot over the past few decades, with more voices being allowed to tell and share their stories and experiences. Director Chris Yarnell has been fearless in his approach to Mulatto Boy, seamlessly bringing together a variety of elements that could have overburdened a less skilled director and suffocated the productions. From White’s lighting design, Georgie Lynch’s set, and Cesar & Jonathan Sousa’s stunning sound, what they’ve created is a show that has been passionately and flawlessly realised. There are multitudes of sound and lighting cues, audience interaction, and still moments of reflection as Huvi tries to figure out his next step, which are realised with exceptional clarity.
Mulatto Boy is a play that is filled with symbolism. Set in the round, the stage has a large, red circle that covers the entire performance space. As there’s no beginning or end of a circle, Very ancient Africans believed that the circle represented God. Moreover, Dr. Joseph A. Bailey II states that the circle is part of what he calls the ME/WE Circle of Wholism:
Afrocentric philosophy refers to wholism as a reality in which interconnectedness, interdependence, interrelatedness, and synthesis prevail in all human ideas, feelings, and acts.
Once De Melo walks into the circle, he doesn’t leave it; he can’t leave it. On the occasion he needs to reach out to audience members, he’s forced to lean towards them but never steps out of the circle. He’s trapped inside it, forced to live on repeat. Though desolated by the end, Huvi/De Melo offers the audience some hope by taking control of his life and the direction he wants to go. In fighting for his birthright as a British citizen, he’s missing the opportunity to reconnect with a part of his life that wasn’t afforded him. De Malo touchingly illustrates this at the start and poetically circles back to it at the end. Maybe our identity isn’t crafted by where we are born but by belonging to a community that deserves us. As the lights go down, Huvi decides to break the cycle, thus saving his life and finding his whole.
What Mulatto Boy does is draw a metaphoric line in the sand to provide audiences and theatre makers alike with a blueprint for the type of theatre that is possible. It's a play that will change perspectives about mulatto identity and help change the prejudice that's permeated the history. De Melo’s ability to measure the anger and frustration that’s within Huvi is inspired. I’ve not seen many debut productions that have the level of insight, thoughtfulness, pain, and resilience quite like Mulatto Boy. De Melo is mastering his craft in such a way that it forges an indelible connection with his audience. This is theatre that aches from a soul and from a playwright who has truly found his calling. It’s a single, simple narrative that is one of millions of stories that never get told and are even less likely to appear on the British stage. With this debut, De Melo joins a small cluster of British playwrights, Kane, Dunbar, Butterworth, Leigh, Orton, and Agbaje, in fully understanding that theatre is about creating authentic work that has something to say.
Mulatto Boy is a play that will stay with me for a long time to come.