Amalgam of rap and Shakespeare in search of the perfect partner – Inside Croydon

KEN TOWL reviews a new work of poetry, theater and dance performed at Fairfield Halls’ Wreck.

Labor of Love: Reece Richards and Sharon Rose in Love Steps by Anastasia Osei-Kuffour

Anastasia Osei-Kuffour has created a (mostly) fast-paced story for every woman that follows a thirtysomething and her search for love in the 21st century. In it, the writer and director puts the protagonist, Anna—and, by extension, the actor Sharon Rose -.

Poor Anna. She is desperate to find a partner. You can’t blame her. Love is all around her. Her friends Shannice and Eva tell her that she has to deal with it. Her father tells her no younger, her mother, the elders at her church all agree… You get the picture.

So, through poetry, theater and dance, we embark on a tour of Anna’s suboptimal love life.

Steps of Love it starts very slowly, tentatively, like Anna’s first attempts at finding love. After 10 minutes of fuzzy electronics behind Rose as she languidly poses, the piece begins in earnest and Anna’s character metaphorically smacks us in the face. In a rhyming verse form that sounds like an amalgamation of rap and Shakespeare, she tells us she’s looking for “the uniqueness, the missing piece.”

She dances with a silent partner (played by Reece Richards) who, it becomes apparent, is not real, a mere fantasy of a man dancing alongside her, but all the spoken words are Anna’s. He is a mime; he is literally just going through the motions.

The strictly traditional values ​​of the Church and Anna’s super high standards seem to be an obstacle to her success. When asked if she would ask a man out, she is shocked, mortified by the very idea. She is a “queen”. She is told that she must try to date off her list. It’s a long list.

She tries online dating, and this gives Richards the opportunity to play a series of mismatched suitors in a fast-paced barrage of shifting accents, face twitches and comical body language. Steps of Love is at its best when the protagonists are given free rein to fight against each other in a kind of slashing and thrusting reminiscent of the barbed debate between Beatrice and Benedict in A lot of noise for nothing.

It also satirically highlights the many failings of humans. Different types are frozen; perhaps the best is the one that uses the name “Leo”. When Anna asks him why he doesn’t use his real name, he says that he doesn’t want anyone to know his real name. When she asks what it is, he says Lionel, hardly a testament to his powers of imagination. When she talks to him on the phone and hears a young voice asking for daddy, she realizes that Lionel is a lying lion.

Not everything is a joke. Osei-Kuffour has a lot to say about the place of black women in British society and the options that are open to them and the options that aren’t, as we watch her encounter men at work, in a club or at church.

In an allusion to the recent episode Parliament,

“You can sit in the House of Commons more than once
and I still don’t get a summons”

reminds us of how Diane Abbott tried to get the President’s attention 46 times to be allowed to speak and was refused, even though the debate was about discriminatory language used against her. Of course, the comment is particularly poignant given the latest developments where there appears to have been an attempt to prevent her from running for Parliament at all.

This was performed at Fairfield Halls, little used (for public performances anyway) ‘Wreck’, the recreation space created during the controversial refurbishment of the halls, and now used by the little seen Talawa Theater Company. It was just a short run of a few shows here in Croydon, part of a national tour.

Steps of Love it slows down a bit toward the end, and its resolution isn’t entirely convincing, but its last line is powerful and accompanied by the ticking of the biological clock that’s been ticking in Anna’s head all along.

That being said, Steps of Love it’s an uplifting experience that showcases the talents of its performers and does so with sharp wit and warm humanity.

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