Writers: Dior Clarke and Stephanie Martin
Director: Rikki Beadle-Blair
A ‘self-love’ coming of age story, Dior Clarke and Stephanie Martin’s Passion Fruit is an energetic biographical tale of queer identity in the Black British community, a 100-minute narrated piece with acted scenes capturing the pressures on young Romeo to conform with other people’s ideas of the type of man he ought to be and the social roles he should be performing. Combining storytelling and dance, the show at the Barbican’s Pit Theatre opens with a cartwheel into the splits from Clarke as the lead performer powers through a story of family, acceptance and self-destruction.
Five-year-old Romeo dances in his North London living room with his beloved mother and brother Perry as she paints their nails, but, discovered by their disapproving father, a sense of shame pervades the house. As the years pass and various male figures come and go in Romeo’s life, his body knows the type of man he wants to be – talented, strong, vulnerable – and his sexuality, even if the rest of him takes a while to catch up.
Clarke and Martin offer Romeo multiple versions of masculinity, from an abusive father figure who tries to quash any sensitivity in his son, telling him to behave like good white boys, to friends insisting on their heterosexuality despite experimenting with him. Some of Passion Fruit’s characters are extremely funny, including a comedy Jamaican grandmother who recounts falling in love with her husband but serves to reinforce concepts of traditional men as providers, and it is in this confusing spectrum of manliness that characterisation emerges.
Romeo is essentially two characters, a gentle young man nervously finding his way through first love, heartache and finding community in the first half of the play and, turning 18 at the start of Act Two, a moody and capricious young adult who drifts away from his family and any sense of ballast, feeling increasingly isolated and misunderstood. And as Romeo evolves through more innocent schoolboy friendships to debauched nights of clubbing, saunas and chem sex parties, he only becomes more vulnerable as the quest for sensation exposes him to greater danger – including a strong moment where he even turns on the silent audience for sitting in judgement of him.
Without fully resolving the transition between the two versions of the character, why the creative team chooses to end Romeo’s story without a reflective conclusion and how Romeo starts to live out some of the same issues affecting his mum are left unresolved. Director Rikki Beadle-Blair’s show is high energy, weaving between Romeo’s pacey narration, dance and acted scenes with plenty of invigorating music that capture the excitement and power of youth but also the isolation of those years because no one understands what it’s like to be you.
Passion Fruit is a little rough around the edges and that is part of its appeal, the authenticity of its storytelling style and the creation of multiple characters played by Troy Alexander, Selina Armoudon and Ashley Byam come alive in Clarke and Matin’s writing showing the only man you need to be, is the one you are.
Runs until 3 May 2025 and at Cambridge Junction 7 –8 May.
