Book review: Kwei-Armah’s ‘Plays’

Story By: Olive Gibbon

Kwame Kwei Armah’s ‘Plays’ were a fast and feisty flavour of various black-British experiences – from Hackney’s murder mile in ‘Elmina’s Kitchen’, to the Black policy think-tank in ‘Statement of Regret’ that crumbles into divisions, as victims turn on each other.

With Ghanaian roots, Kwame Kwei-Armah is a celebrated actor, playwright, and director most known for ‘Elmina’s Kitchen’, ‘Fix Up’, ‘Statement of Regret’, and ‘Let There Be Love’. I would recommend reading one of these plays at the first chance you get, for their accessible sadness and tension.

For me, the most notable element of these plays was their speed. All four of them had an ease and smoothness with which dialogue could be read; a reader’s eyes will fly through them, lapping up the truly dramatic – conflict and addictive tension. These plays are packed with the unexpected, the exciting, and the tragic.

‘Elmina’s Kitchen’ revolves around family, drugs and crime in London’s Hackney, and will not take anyone long to read who would like a glimpse of the black experience in early 2000s London. This play did, for me, what any good drama will do – plunge you into tension that is both uncomfortable and fascinating, and hold you under. Tension is exacerbated through the use of one setting – Deli’s West Indian takeaway restaurant. I sensed this play was easy for Kwei-Armah, he had a lot to say. This was his most fiery and feisty.

‘Fix Up’ explores roots and race further. Perhaps the less climactic, slightly stunted nature of this play was deliberate – to reflect the futility of efforts like Kiyi’s ‘black conscious’ bookstore in a brutal, ignorant, unstoppable machine of a world. “I does sit down and talk to that girl and I does say to meself woooy, where does that rage come from in these apathetic times? Then the wind whisper in me ears, ‘Ah my time again’. That’s why I know it’s coming.” Unfortunately, in the play, those apathetic times reign.

I found ‘Statement of Regret’ particularly tragic, to witness victims of the same monster turn on each other, rather than on their oppressors. This play felt more continuously tense and dense, like ‘Elmina’s Kitchen’, which I enjoyed. Again, we feel like a guest allowed to eavesdrop in a place of drama – we must keep up with the complex family relations and madness unfolding. ‘Let There Be Love’ explores family and roots in a notably different way. The play unapologetically sees the good – perhaps without cliché. We see a broken, already ‘fallen’ Caribbean cussed old man, with broken relationships to his daughters, who is somewhat softened by a friendship with a young Polish home help. It deals with assisted dying in an ambiguous way. This play, I think, tries to say that to be loved and to be able to love, is to be listened to.