Multiple Plays In One: Roy Williams’ The Fellowship
Black women speaking. Sisterhood. The Windrush Generation. Love is love, or is it? Windrush children are now dealing with their parents’ pain, governmental driven expulsion and demise. What is their legacy?
I love Roy Williams writing. He’s subtle, character driven and yet able to engage with current, painful and immensely deep themes. Even his character’s ugly traits can be understood in his complex, nuanced writing.
I really wanted to like this play and it has a lot going for it. However, it lacks the pace and character driven plotting of his previous works for stage and radio. The first half felt quite slow and flabby; the second half had a dramatic change of pace which helped. Just the outcomes of the play make me wonder.
There seem to be three or four plays fighting to be heard in this play — all at the same time. One is about two sisters — both successful; one a high flying barrister and one who has not reached her potential, but married a touring saxophonist. They spar about their relationships, their relationship with their debilitated mother and elder care, about activism versus the law. The sisters, Marcia (Suzanne Llewellyn) and Dawn (Cherrelle Skeete) fizz with life and emotions; sparring too with Dawn’s apparently feckless husband Tony (Trevor Laird), a musician who passes through his wife and son’s lives, and yet was willing to raise Dawn’s son from a former marriage.
As we move on, terrible things are revealed - Dawn’s son was killed by a gang, apparently involving his then girlfriend Simone (Rosie Day) — who is loved by Dawn’s remaining son Jermaine (Ethan Hazzard). In a funny scene, Jermaine is cross-examined by his aunty (in front of his jury of a Mum), and resorts to using a coffee mug as a stand-in name for his girlfriend to escape intrusion into his business. Jermaine’s on-off girlfriend Simone (formerly his brother’s unloved girlfriend) is hated by his Mum and he’s trying to hide from everyone that he loves her in a committed way, that this (and he) is serious. Much like his Dad, he is always leaving — but for very different reasons.
Dawn has secrets too — she loves cheese and much of the joy of this play came from Dawn and her sister dancing together — to music that ‘black people’ aren’t meant to like! Tony’s unwillingness to dance to his wife or perhaps partner’s cheesy music seems to be symptomatic of the bigger problems between them — all he can see and hear is bad music!
Unlike Roy Williams other plays there was more of a sledgehammer than dialogue between himself, his characters and the audience. In no uncertain terms, all white people were and are bad and Dawn expressed racist views, without really being challenged or thinking differently. She was even able to throttle a white character with little happening to her. Whilst I don’t want to deny that the Windrush generation (and indeed children) have and are being treated appallingly — not to mention the heinous flights to Rwanda — is hating all white people as activism and political action really the way forward? Where is Luther King’s Rainbow Nation? All of Dawn’s words were ironic as she was sadly berating a majority white audience. Marcia did challenge Dawn a bit, but was dismissed as being almost white herself and she apparently learnt her lesson when her white partner proved treacherous.
The play went up a gear shifting from Tony berating Dawn for caring for her mother to Marcia taking the responsibility for her white politician partner’s drunk driving by claiming that she was driving the car. Therefore putting at risk all that she had worked ‘three times’ as hard for. However, the multiple issues raised in the play were never allowed time to breathe — already we were covering black women speaking articulately and their social anger; the grief and loss and desire for revenge (rightly so) of a mother feeling failed by the legal system; who belongs — Windrush; being children of the Windrush generation and a certain amount of survivor guilt; elder care; successful working women who are within the establishment; culture….
Tony was woefully underwritten, but Trevor Laird did a lot with him to make him sympathetic — i.e. he didn’t sign up for elder care, and thinks Marcia is a sell out. Overall we didn’t see much of him (he is always asking Dawn what she wants — she can’t tell him — and he leaves, because she tells him to, expecting that he will anyway — all D H Lawrencian) — why is he unfaithful? How is he pursuing his dreams and music — how successful is he? How good a father is he? Appallingly Tony seemed to be a stereotype of feckless man — absent, adulterous, walking away, resentful, and yet he had some gentle, encouraging discussions with Jermaine. Why couldn’t he communicate with Dawn, work out what she wanted? The sense of him being that self-centred didn’t come across, not really did his side of things. Apart from the fact that if he can’t enjoy Dawn’s music or dance with her then he’s no good and should go!
Jermaine and Simone’s romance was beautifully done — from awkwardness and teasing banter to support, and shifting a gear again, Simone’s role in his brother’s death and whether she will press charges against his Mum for a clear assault. How do the generations relate to each and communicate seems to be the main theme of this play? How can urban communities embrace and love one another?
Dawn and Simone clash against each other in a resentment filled meeting leading to Dawn’s anger exploding against Simone. In a brilliant scene, a black female PC comes to caution Dawn — who tries to pull community and historic strings to distract proceedings. Marcia also comes to stay (comedy suitcases in hand) as her relationship with Giles, her politician, has blown up — there is evidence that she was no driving at the time of smashing through a pedestrian barrier — he was. Marcia’s white clerk has strings to pull, but Marcia has office party dirt to use against her (if needed).
In a second visit of PC, Dawn snarls and sneers as the woman tries to do her job — purely because of what, and whom, she represents. Who is your community, your real community? the play now thunders.
The second half went into a much faster plot and pace — Jermaine having felt the need to reassure Simone that his brother’s death wasn’t her fault, now wants to ask Simone if she is going to press charges against his Mum? So much of the play focuses on awkward communication — what is and isn’t being said, what people are holding back from each other. Dawn and Marcia’s Mum suddenly died and they were holding the funeral wake. Unexpectedly Dawn was literally ghosted by her Mum — in a perfect 1950s calypso version of herself, leading to a painful conversation as Dawn discussed her Mum’s lack of maternal feelings, harsh words and their fractured relationship. Their Mum was beautifully created — pristine, ladylike, constantly correcting and lamenting the deaths of the Windrush generation (and what is being lost with them). Again, this could have been a play in itself.
Jermaine sees his Mum apparently losing it; Simone decides not to press charges and Jermaine keeps seeking to reconcile Simone and Dawn and introduce the woman he loves to his family well. Simone has already fired off (truthfully though harshly) at Dawn that her beloved murdered son had bad mouthed his mother and maybe wasn’t the person who is now being remembered and memoralised.
Dawn has to reconcile to many things, but seems to do all of this too easily and quickly. All you need is music and dance — apparently. Again Tony tries to find out what Dawn wants, she doesn’t know and tells him go — so he does. Marcia similarly ditches Giles and the establishment she is a part of. Simone reveals a love of Culture Club as forced on her by her dancing Mum — everyone dances to the cheese and all is well. Moral of the story is ditch feckless men and be sisters?
Whilst I don’t want to dismiss the power of dance and music bringing people together, it seemed trite and to go against all that Roy Williams has written before — men are the problem, so get rid of men? How then could he write such eloquent, complex male characters such as Delroy or the two handers in The Conversation. In giving voice to black women, men of their era were reduced to cliches. Only Jermaine seemed to be allowed fullness of character and expression. The fight between the sisters avoiding communicating by turning Alexa on and off was fun, and the way music and dance used was good, but it also felt gimmicky with all the Alexa references.
Marcia was beautifully characterised — placing her heeled shoes just so together, curling her legs under her gracefully; a counterpoint to her sister’s rage and struggle (and yet she had her own). We never see Dawn’s overcoming of her rage and struggle (or channeling of it) which is a shame. But the narrative arc of the play is trying to do too many things — whilst being a play about communication or lack of it, it is also trying to be atleast five other plays too — relationships, men and women, Windrush, society and culture, place and belonging; with Simone — who she is against who others say she is. (Simone is equally judged and found wanting by Dawn).
There were jokes, just (I’m so sad to say cos Roy Williams) it lacked the pace, plotting and punch narrative story arc of other works. The first half was very slow — the second half had a completely different dynamic and was much faster and punchy. So many of the themes brought out were not allowed to breathe and it feels unsatisfying, lacking the moral change or character development of other works, Normally I feel like I’ve been inside a character’s heads and lives; here I was definitely watching a play — the story and characters were somewhat removed from the audience. The characters were delightful and the actors barnstormed — but the play is trying to do too many things at once, including allowing racist attitudes and expressions to stand, almost as fact, without challenge. I would like to see more of the female WPC who did an amazingly calm job of managing Dawn and Marcia’s cultural and social distractions and doing her job well. Would the play, infact, have worked better as a series of talking heads monologues? Deeply sorry to say so much of this about a Roy Williams play — cos Roy Williams — but the full potential of the play is not reached and I’m not sure what (if any conclusions) are reached; if the characters really do change. My disappointment is that I wanted it to be wonderful, rather it was average to good — he had so much material to dig into and let breathe, that really six plays are needed as he clearly has so much that he needs to say here about how generations do or don’t speak to each other about their experiences.
