Five Years with the White Man ★★★★
KIngs Head Theatre, London
The joyous jumble sale rummage that is the Vaults Festival is now over. Perhaps permanently. If you felt overwhelmed by the selection then the King’s Head Sight Unseen Festival is more digestible in its offering. Somehow it has managed to find a gem from the Vaults that we missed. Five Years with the White Man is a pleasingly obscure work that resurfaces an intrepid historical figure while providing an impressive showcase of its single performer, Joseph (Joey) Akubeze.
Written by Eloka Obi and Saul Boyer and directed by Sam Raymer, the tale of August Boyle Chamberlayne Merriman-Labor is a reverse satire of western colonial exploration. Instead of a white man’s travelogues of ‘darkest Africa’ Merriman-Labor travels to Edwardian London to write an ethnographic account entitled Briton Through Negro Spectacles. Merriman-Labor has grown up in Sierra Leone fascinated by the tales of the white bogeyman out to get him should he ever misbehave.
Once in London Merriman-Labor is beset by challenges, finding a place to stay, earning a living, and achieving his legal credentials to become a barrister. At the same time, he is trying to set up a trading company that links retailers directly to African producers without the colonial middlemen taking the largest slice of the profits. Eventually, he completes his book, but to a frosty reception in Britain and total disinterest back home in Sierra Leone.
Interwoven with this is a contemporary tale of a writer and performer trying to capture the history of Merriman-Labor and interpret it for today’s audience. What links the two storylines is that both the contemporary performer and Merriman-Labor have to simultaneously struggle with the passion and grief of finding and losing their lovers.
Akubeze romps impressively through the performance delivering a heaving throng of characters in a ballet of stamina, charm, and pathos. The switches between storylines and personas never lose definition despite a precarious structure of the narrative. In his hands, the chaos becomes choreographed. For a one-person 70-minute show in a tiny theater, it’s a gratifyingly full night.
Review by ANDREW HEBDENQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing, and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement, he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre, and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
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