IN THE BLOOD (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama/Richard Burton Company)***

 

By Cal 

Link: https://www.rwcmd.ac.uk/events/blood

Available until: 12^th March 2021

In the Blood covers many of the same themes as Yen did last night, yet the two plays are very different. It’s another story about a mother struggling to look after her kids. Another story that ends in tragedy.

Hester might not be a candidate for Mother of the Year, but she tries to look after all her kids. She’s living in poverty, she can’t read and she doesn’t have support from any of her children’s fathers. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t have a scarily aggressive side, but she cares and she tries. That is evident all the way through, but each of her children presents their own challenges and there are also adults in her life putting pressure on her, challenging her and making her life even more difficult.

Hester is also a person of colour and while I do think there’s no connection between the colour of her skin and her aggressive nature – that’s down to personality – I think there is a connection between the colour of her skin and the way others treat her.

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks really doesn’t hide from the dark side and it’s a great strength of the play that she doesn’t present her characters as being simply misunderstood. Hester is far from perfect and definitely not without faults. She is to blame for some of her problems. This complicates the situation and there are times when your sympathy for her wavers, if not disappears altogether, but this is realistic. Hester is a human being who has been in some terrible situations and now she’s in another one.

Lekan Lawal directs the production and it does take a little while to get started. They spend the first five minutes or so dancing around the stage. I thought it was an exercise class. So that does seem a little bit odd, but once the play gets started, the vividness of the performances tells the story really well. There is social distancing, but it’s actually not that noticeable. The distances felt natural. However, it does mean that a lot of the stage directions can’t be performed and this was dealt with by putting the stage directions at the top of the screen, like surtitles at the opera. It’s a good idea, but the font was quite difficult to read and it didn’t stand out very well on my screen so I probably did miss some of what was happening – though it did give some sort of insight in what it might be for Hester, seeing words everywhere but not being able to read them.

The play includes video images superimposed onto the stage so it looks like you’re seeing the characters more than once. The video design is by Ethan Lloyd and it works well because seeing the different Hesters made me think of all the other people who have been in her situation before and will be in the future. Hester has caused a lot of her problems, but she isn’t the real problem here. Society is the problem and no matter what happens to Hester, society won’t go away.

Bianca Stephens is incredible as Hester. Whether you like the character or not, the energy Bianca puts into her performance and the sympathy she does manage to win are really impressive and the result is a play you really want to keep watching. There’s also a scene where things nearly work out and Bianca’s performance is so touching, showing us a new side to Hester but without producing one of the ridiculous personality transplants which are so common in soaps. This part of Hester was always there, but circumstances have never allowed it to come to the fore before.

The rest of the cast double their roles, with each actor playing one of Hester’s children, plus an adult who plays a role in shaping her life. They do really well to contrast their child and adult characters so clearly. Winston Branche is relaxed as Chilli… as long as things are going his way. As Chilli’s son Jabber, he shows a rather sad mix of aggression and vulnerability. Harriet Chomley is very sweet as Beauty (the children’s names are all characteristics rather than actual names) and dynamic as Hester’s friend Amiga. Mark Henry Davies is lovely as Trouble, but very serious and convincingly at least a couple of decades older as the Doctor. Francesca Henry is aggressive and coarse as Bully, and Richard McIver is a sweet Baby, but their Welfare Lady and Reverend are completely different people.

 

In the Blood is a very interesting play with some brilliant performances and there is a lot in it which we need to be thinking about.