Writer: Tarell Alvin McCraney
Director: Nancy Medina
Director Nancy Medina’s tender, atmospheric 2023 production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s coming-of-age drama Choir Boy comes to Stratford East, 14 years after the play first saw light of day at the Royal Court. The production sensibly leans into the piece’s strengths: marvellously executed a Capella Gospel and spiritual music, lashings of comedy, and a sympathetic, fully fleshed-out teenage protagonist. But even a director as accomplished as Medina cannot quite paper over a baggy middle half, static minor characters, and some decidedly melodramatic flourishes.
It is graduation day at the elite, all-black, all-boys Charles R. Drew Prep School (a high school, not the British institution of the same name). This is the kind of rigidly regimented place with a sword in its coat of arms, and where students greet each other with cultish salutes involving thumping fists against chests. The school’s founder launched the institution after hearing boys singing in the shower, foreshadowing the location where the darkest events will unfold. It is no surprise that flamboyant, in-your-face, queer chorister Pharus (Terique Jarrett in the best of the evening’s uniformly top-notch performances) struggles to fit in with the institution’s traditional masculine ideals.
As Pharus approaches his solo performance, the highlight of the ceremony, grieving fellow choir member Bobby (Rabi Kondé) hurls a homophobic slur, causing the boy to falter in mid-song. Bobby’s uncle, headmaster (Daon Broni), whose attitude to Pharus’ sexual identity is summed up as “keep your minds clean and your hands in prayer”, subsequently demands to know what went wrong and who said what. True to the brotherhood-defining axiom “Drew men don’t snitch”, Pharus refuses to tell on Bobby, leaving the hurt to fester over a summer away.
When school reconvenes the following autumn, Pharus, now promoted to head choir boy, kicks Bobby out of rehearsals, setting the scene for a year of conflict between the two. On hand as observers and occasional fellow travellers in the conflict are Pharus’s bestie, school jock AJ (Freddie MacBruce), the deeply religious, poor scholarship boy David (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, so good in the Bush’s recent Miss Myrtle’s Garden), and the dumb-but-nice JR (Khalid Daley). Martin Turner completes the ensemble as Mr Pendleton, a retired white teacher, unfathomably brought in to help the lads find meaning in their black heritage. “Be vulnerable”, Pendleton instructs the boys, demanding they bring to the choir a song that has meaning for parents, grandparents, and by implication the wider community they are part of.
How can or should Pharus navigate his identity in a space that celebrates Blackness but rejects queerness? And when the chips are down, whose side will a school that seems to prioritise masculine conformity over authenticity be on? McCraney’s point is that cultural institutions that rightly seek to build pride in heritage can sometimes become cages.
The boys find their voices (and stonkingly attractive voices they are) and their ability to communicate with each other in Gospel music – most of the emotional heavy-lifting and moments of real intensity in Choir Boy come through song. Musical director Femi Temowo delivers beautifully rendered unaccompanied harmonies and solos, oozing genuine pathos. Movement director Ingrid Mackinnon’s clever take on traditional ‘step’ movements provides an engaging physical counterpoint to the vocal melodies.
Midway through, McCraney has Bobby and Pharus debate with Mr Pendleton about how literally to take the words of traditional spiritual music. Bobby argues for established interpretations, while Pharus seeks his own meaning. The debate is a cypher for the bigger question of conformity versus authenticity and is interesting in its own right, but feels oddly out of place in a piece that works best when it focuses on character. It is as if the narrative takes a 20-minute coffee break.
Sub-plot complications hint at the grief behind Bobby’s knee-jerk homophobia, and hidden secrets troubling both David and AJ – the violence, when it comes, emerges from an unexpectedly melodramatic twist. Most get a solo to themselves, but the minor characters’ journeys never really feel complete, leaving Pharus’s story to carry the load of what feels like a long two and a half hours.
Jarrett’s show-stealing Pharus has a facade of feisty self-confidence, but beneath it lies sharply communicated pain. Daley’s JR does not have a huge amount to do, but gets the best solo in What Wondrous Love Is This. Go for the songs and the performances.
Runs until 25 April 2026
