“Black is everything. Black is life.” Let yourself be introduced to Henrietta Lacks, the inhabitant of petri dishes who you might already know, without knowing it.
In this production of Mojisola Adebayo’s Family Tree, directed by Matthew Xia, the audience will find a very sensitive and warm approach to difficult topics that need to be addressed, with deep historic roots, and ramifications up to our times. The play has the magnificent performances of Aminita Francis as Henrietta Lacks; Mofetoluwa Akande as Ain, Anarcha and Oshun; Keziah Joseph as Bibi and Betsey and Aimeé Powell as Lyn and Lucy, and the pertinent and silent participation of Alistair Hall as the Smoking Man. The group delivers for astonishing poetical texts, embodied in a beautiful way.
The show starts with a speech from Francis serving as a narrator, explaining what the play will be about, and it does take a few minutes to explain it all. When she is talking, it might seem like it will be impossible for the play to cover all those topics, but alas, it does, and very well indeed. When in the middle of this introduction the term “Ethics of the Earth” came up, I couldn’t help but to wonder how that could at all be connected to the case of illegally obtained cells from the womb of a sick black woman. But again, the conversation held between cells and a tree was surprisingly convincing. By the end of the play, it all made sense, and I understood why every little part was necessary for the whole to be what it was.
The set and costume design by Simon Kenny is as beautiful as it is flexible. It is clear at the beginning why Francis’s Henrietta can’t understand where she is, and the set is beautifully dynamic in how it’s taken and occupied by the actors. The alternation of scenes between NHS nurses and US slaves is surprisingly smooth, and it makes the case for unresolved issues in the transatlantic history of black women. The trio of nurses is unexpectedly funny when talking about complicated topics, and the sufferings and tortures narrated by the trio of enslaved women emphasizes their solidarity without compromising explicitly speaking about the horrors they went through.
For a story that was in the news, and made headlines not many years ago, the storytelling is full of interesting twists, that the actors carry with grace and subtlety, as well as gifting the audience with singing and dancing. The songs and the sound design in the play, by Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, are particularly beautiful, and create an atmosphere of dream-like possibilities. Although there is nothing groundbreaking about the play in theatrical terms, what it does, it does perfectly well. The actors are all heart touching, in almost every intervention they have, with an impeccable sense of timing for a 90-minutes, no interval play that seems to fly away.
Delicate, honest, direct and poetic, this play will confront you with the reality of inequality in the field of science and medicine, which seems to present itself as an aseptic and always well-intended field of knowledge. Paraphrasing one of the characters, this is a play about black and why.
A must see for understanding the history behind some of the most important medical discoveries in the last 70 years, but also to have a great time enjoying and understanding what it means to be a black woman.
Playing until 23rd April, https://brixtonhouse.co.uk/
Reviewer: Gonzalo Sentana
Reviewed: 12th April 2023
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★