Review by Sam Waite
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Note: …blackbird hour features frank discussions of and allusions to strong themes, including grief, substance abuse, and suicidal ideation.
Potential content warnings can be found here: https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/blackbird-hour-self-care-and-content-warnings.pdf
“you can’t stand that however you feel about me doesn’t change that i wanna combust into brilliant black dust.”
While …cake’s 2021 run at Theatre Peckham marked babirye bukilwa’s debut play, the multihyphenate creator was already capturing attention for a previously written, then-unperformed piece. That play, …blackbird hour, exists as a pseudo-sequel to bukilwa’s other production, a companion piece rather than a true follow-on from what was already performed. In its premiere at the Bush Theatre, where it is co-produced by Vital Xposure, …blackbird hour proves utterly arresting whether or not its audience is familiar with what came before.
Scripted by bukilwa and directed by malakaï sargeant, its refreshing to see the driving forces behind a show be so in sync – both creatives have opted to be credited without capitalisation in their names, and both are Black, non-binary creatives. These shared characteristics bring a deeper truth to protagonist Eshe, a queer Black woman, and have surely helped to mould the empathy with which the character is presented. A year on from the loss of her mother (Sissy, with whom Eshe appeared in …cake) and an undisclosed time after an injury-inducing crash, Eshe is collapsing under her poor mental health and reliance on drugs and alcohol – so concerning is this behaviour, that longtime friend Michael and girlfriend Ella have finally agreed on something: Eshe needs their help.
bukilwa’s script is not concerned with establishing lines of good or bad, of who is to blame in the fracturing of relationships. Instead, we are met with the truth of the characters’ hearts, and the emotions that threaten to entirely consume them – Michael and Ella would each give up everything if it would help Eshe, but she can’t see past the pain to the better future they’re offering. A deeply skilled writer, bukilwa is particularly good at producing substance-induced ramblings from Eshe, who is continually and confusingly talking for much of the show, but whose thoughts are always just skimming past the truth she wants to let out, and whose ideas are more concrete than her state might suggest. Their plotting and pacing are also strong, so much feeling as if it has happened while so little action has taken place, and the realisation of the first section of the performance being told in real time coming as a shock, at least to me, after so much had changed about the emotions and energy in the room.
Both Ivan Oyik’s Michael and Olivia Nakintu’s Ella are entirely believable, both actings delivering strong, fully-formed performances in characters who are deliberately secondary, the show belongs to Evlyne Oyedokun. Her Eshe is insatiable in her thirst to be heard, and equally as firm in her desperation for solitude, wanting so badly to both protect and preserve her troubled mind. Going a mile a minute, Oyedokun is a marvel as she tears through Eshe’s wandering, almost mesmerising trains of thought in an effort to get to a point even she likely doesn’t fully understand. As the character becomes more and more intoxicated, Oyedokun’s performance shifts so smoothly, so realistically, that it’s jarring when she is next seen sober – such a descent feels too real, too raw to have simply been a pretence.
In fact, the secondary nature of the other characters makes brief moments attempting to flesh them out fall slightly flat. A spat where Ella reveals to us that Michael had made a move on her previously is easy to forget, as is Michael’s effort to pursue a romance with Eshe even as she falls apart before his eyes. There is much to discuss about this small cast of characters – their being Black, there being a queer relationship connecting two of them, the awkward dynamics that friendships between women and straight men create – but too-brief efforts to bring these ideas to the surface left me wondering why they needed to be highlighted so bluntly. Still, the work surrounding these stumbles is so compelling that it wasn’t until I read through the text on the journey home that I remembered how stilted this moment seemed.
Rounding out the small cast is late mother Sissy, brought to the stage through a combination of Danielle Kassaraté’s voiceover and video designer Will Monks’ creative captioning. The captions are present throughout the performance, and “creative” truly is the right word, the words themselves having character and personality of their own. Increasingly-intoxicated Eshe’s words literally cloud and blur before our eyes, while the voice she hears in her head – the voice of the mother she still grieves – have their own unique, emboldened font, to remind Eshe and the audience just how hard the voice is to shut out. Alongside their place as an always-welcome tool for accessibility of the text itself, Monks’ captions deepen the narrative for both those listening to the words and those only able to read them – if you rely heavily on captioning, I’d advise a seat in the central section, a row or two back if possible, and would assure you that Monks’ work has truly deepened the experience of the written word in a way that genuinely improves upon the viewing experience.
Direction from sargeant leans smartly into naturalism, with the joint results of the audience being forced to reckon with the truth of the situations shown, and of Eshe’s drifts into fanciful thought and the text’s exploration of metaphor being all the more distinct. On paper, there is some resemblance between bukilwa’s …blackbird hour and the tortured poetry of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, sharing the same willingness to play with structure and sequence, and the reliance on ideas and emotions rather than clear events. However, bukilwa’s work has a clearer narrative, and sargeant has done well to balance the imaginative world of the script and the very real world in which Eshe and co. must live. Working alongside them is Asha Jennings-Grant, whose work as both movement director and intimacy coordinator helps to develop and deepen the connections between characters, and to allow some shocking moments without concern for the safety of the performers.
Funny in places, tragic in others, and deliberately unwilling to allow for an emotional catharsis, …blackbird hour’s main criticism may prove to be its obtuseness – its sheer unwillingness to allow the audience a true resolution. It’s absolutely the point, and as the final moments play out it’s clear that we’re not supposed to understand how Eshe feels or be able to follow here she goes. Still, that lack of emotionally release, of letting out that breath the story forces you to hold, will leave some feeling incomplete – again, it’s the point, but it doesn’t make it palatable for everyone. babirye bukilwa has written something unique, something true, and the truth is sometimes more painful that we are equipped to handle.
…blackbird hour plays in the Studio at the Bush Theatre until March 1st
For tickets and information visit https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/blackbird-hour/
Photos by Seye Isikalu