Director: Kalungi Ssebandeke
Writer: Nia Akilah Robinson
Sometimes the traumas of ancestry take a lifetime to heal. Sometimes it takes a united family to do so.
Harlem writer Nia Akilah Robinson’s new play The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) explores the intertwined messiness that colonialism has made of the lives of Black Americans for centuries. In an inspired premiere by director Kalungi Ssebandeke, this journey will take you into unexpected places.
Set in an 1832 graveyard in Philadelphia, here we meet Charity( Christie Fewry) and her Mother (Sydney Sainté). Their father and husband has recently passed, laid to rest in the grounds of this African Baptist Church, but his soul may not make it to heaven if they aren’t careful. Grave robbers abound in this period and it will take a lot of sleepless nights to keep them away from his body.
Surprisingly, this is not the only through line that The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) delves into. Through beautifully executed vocalised transitions, we are transported intermittently to the modern day, in the same location as before. But now the graveyard is the site of a children’s camp, where another Charity and Mother wrestle with the issues that have permeated their family for generations.
Flipping between these two times allows for welcome changes of pace, as the modern time period is far more playful than the dreary reality of 1832. But it is the way the times intertwine that provides the most intriguing aspect of the play. Jack Gouldbourne’s dual role as two versions of the character of John makes for both the silliest moments and the darkest, with one John acting as a cold, villainous grave robber, while his 21st-century counterpart is a flamboyant camp supervisor.
Rounding out the cast is Romeo Mika’s Cuffee, who similarly alternates characters from a grave-robbing janitor to the highly disliked leader of the camp, but it is in the moments where the play delves into surrealism that he is allowed to shine.
The set design by Ruth Badila ensconces the characters in a white, cobbled-together space: a blank canvas that permits light and sound to paint across it to convey the differing eras.
The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) questions how the traumas of our ancestors make us who we are today, but the journey that it takes you on ventures into surprising but sorrowful places.
Runs until 1 June 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Grave-robbing across time
