Writers: Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong and Simone Ibbett-Brown
Director: Lakesha Arie-Angelo
Cassiopeia Berkeley-Agyepong and Simone Ibbett-Brown’s 2019 play Shuck ‘n’ Jive is the latest addition to Soho Theatre’s On Demand series. This new version, created especially for its digital platform, takes advantage of film editing techniques to manage the episodic narrative, move back in time, insert fantasy sequences and draw heavily on popular culture in its exploration of endemic racism, female friendship and the value of theatre.
Sick of failed auditions and stereotyped casting, friends Cassi and Simone decide to write their own play based on the everyday conversations they have with each other in person and, more often, by text. Drawing together their experiences of microaggressions and more overt forms of prejudice, they create a satirical anthology piece called Shuck ‘n’ Jive.
Meta in style and structure, this 70-minute show uses the concept of theatre-making as the basis of their story while weaving together excerpts from their real lives and the conversations the writers used to create it. Within this, Berkeley-Agyepong and Ibbett-Brown add fantasy elements including an obstacle course TV game show that explores unacceptable behaviours in their social circle and modern audition sequences that merge into slave songs performed in vaudeville style as a comment on the continued limited perceptions of black actors.
Director Lakesha Arie-Angelo has taken the original stage show and used this filmed version as an opportunity to utilise different storytelling approaches including a split screen when Cassi and Simone are apart but texting each other – conversations they read aloud – and different colour washes and cuts to draw distinction between flashback and fantasy sections.
Across the piece the conversations about race perceptions spill over from the stage roles the characters audition for and increasingly dominate their everyday lives as well. A particularly strong scene focuses on notions of exoticism in which a strange man approaches Cassi in a cafe, immediately objectifies her by projecting his notions of black female sexuality and refuses to take no for an answer, an experience that is notably violating.
Shuck ‘n’ Jive deliberately avoids a linear narrative, almost revelling in its disconnected musings as it bumbles between comic scenarios and skits which can be confusing, even frustrating as different themes fade in and out of focus. But slowly, the jumble starts to form a coherent pattern of behaviours and experiences that have a collective impact, much as Cassi and Simone experience them day-to-day. And there is a liberating charm that balances its personal, political and social messages in the managed chaos of it all.
Performed by Tanisha Spring as Cassi and Olivia Onyehara as Simone, there is enough distinction between the characters to give depth to the experiences they have in common, although the representation of their friendship is never quite as convincing as the stories they tell in spite of the faux arguments they write in to make their connection more realistic.
There are tones of sketch shows such as Not the Nine O’Clock News and Brasseye in Berkeley-Agyepong and Ibbett-Brown’s approach that give this Soho on Demand film a dynamic quality and the performers sustain its energy across 70-minutes while asking the audience and themselves some big if unstructured questions.
Runs until 27 February 2022
