Writer and director: Ché Walker
Be warned! Ché Walker’s new 70-minute play, Burnt Up Love, receiving its world premiere here, takes us to very dark places. It explores how love and violence can co-exist side-by-side and feed off each other. It is a harrowing yet strangely rewarding experience.
As writer, director and leading actor, Walker spreads darkness all around the Finborough Theatre. Five candelabras and, occasionally, a torch are the only sources of light. Seen through the gloom, the three characters vaguely resemble Dickensian villains. Sharing a room with them feels dangerous.
Mac (Walker) is serving a 20-year prison sentence for murder. He combats the harsh realities of prison life with only a small photograph of his smiling, then three-year-old daughter keeping him going. He imagines that she is on her way to achieving one of the lofty goals which he has set for her, and, on his release, his sole ambition is to find her.
Joanne Marie Mason is superb as Scratch, the daughter. She is a wild spirit, bright and street-wise, dragged to the fringes of the criminal underworld as if it is her birthright. She forms an edgy romantic relationship with another petty criminal, JayJayJay (Alice Walker), but, as if it is in her genes, gruesome deeds from her past return to haunther, and the chain of violence in her family remains unbroken.
Stark and often shocking, Burnt Up Love hits with the force of a short, sharp shock. Written in the style of an epic love poem, it takes us into an underworld in which normal civilised behaviour is readily set aside but one in which deep human emotions still thrive.
Runs until 23 November 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Dark and dangerous
