… Blackbird Hour, Bush Theatre review - an unrelentingly tough watch

In a world tainted with racism and homophobia, the Bush theatre is something of a refuge from prejudice. As one of the most queer friendly venues in London, it’s no surprise that this theatre is now staging babirye bukilwa’s … Blackbird Hour, a play which explores the experiences of a black queer woman who finds herself on the edge.

This is the playwright’s first play, and it was shortlisted for a number of prestigious prizes in 2019 and 2020, so its staging is long overdue. However, perhaps the fact that it’s a tough watch has something to do with this delay. With a running time of about 85 minutes, the piece manages to create a whole world of pain.

The plot, such as it is, concerns East-Londoner Eshe, a 27-year-old queer woman who has both a physical injury and is suffering an episode of acute mental illness, brought on by the death of her mother, Sissy. Although those who love her want to help, Eshe will have none of it. In the middle of the night, she rejects her worried girlfriend Ella, who leaves her alone, but remains close by, in the vicinity. Then Eshe’s former boyfriend Michael arrives, and the pair communicate in a fraught conversation in which Eshe’s condition — intensified by the self-destructive use of pills, spliffs and alcohol — reaches crisis point.

… Blackbird Hour offers a very powerful account of mental breakdown, representing Eshe’s increasingly unbearable thoughts, with added interjections in her mother’s voice, culminating in a rather predictable medical emergency. The sense of a desperate need for love, while at the same time wanting to be completely alone, is very realistic: Eshe questions the meaning of this human need. What good is love if it doesn’t make you feel better, or feel anything at all? How can you be sure if those who say they love you are telling the truth? Isn’t it safer just to push everyone away?

bukilwa’s text is a mixture of naturalistic dialogue, with literary touches of poetic imagery, references to pop culture and sudden shifts of feeling. The balance between the subjective emotions of despairing agony and the more reasonable language of the bystanders in an episode of mental collapse is finely wrought. The result is both sad and extremely uncomfortable: while it is possible to inject humour into stories of mental anguish, the playwright refuses to make things easy for us. Although there are moments of bleak comedy, they barely register in a show that dives deep into the darkest emotions humans are capable of enduring.

At the same time, the playwright is very perceptive about how Eshe’s uncontrollable behaviour — drinking, smoking, taking pills, not washing, not cleaning the flat — is frustrating for those closest to her. Both Ella and Michael find it hard to intervene, and are at first unable to help the person they love. There’s a real sense here of Eshe’s making a private internal journey, almost a Calvary, in which she shoulders all the bad stuff of her life, determined to face the world alone — until she really can’t. If the first part of the play is more intensely present than the softer final scenes, this underlines the lack of a dramatic plot.

bukilwa, who is also a poet and performer, writes very well, and the circularity of a distressed person’s thinking, which often resembles a record that is stuck in a groove, comes across strongly, as does the idea that the emotion of love has its limits, and that the only way out of extreme breakdown is to get outside help. Despite the fact that some of the dialogues are a bit too obvious, such as Ella’s oft-stated desire to respect her lover’s boundaries, there are several episodes where manic energy takes over, with obscure but intriguing oceanic imagery or deliberately robot-like physical movements.

Director malakaï sargeant’s strong production features a suitably untidy set, designed by Khadija Raja, and includes Will Monks’s video projections of the dialogues, which are imaginatively conceived to be simultaneously an aid to accessibility and a work of art in their own right: words drift across the background, they blur or bounce around. The projections not only use creative captions, but also have images of watchful eyes and brooding visuals, as well as the swirls of abstracted thoughts. Waves that waver, music that flows and the occasional phone icon.

The cast deliver performances of great integrity, led by Evlyn Oyedokun’s deeply troubled Eshe, an intense and suicidal woman clearly on the edge, her energies locked in a downward spiral, as she drinks, giggles, roars, sobs and makes cruel comments about those nearest and dearest. She gets excellent support from Ivan Oyik’s patient Michael and Olivia Nakintu’s practically minded Ella. Danielle Kassaraté gives voice to Sissy, some of whose comments are like rays of relief in what is otherwise quite a gloomy evening. Simultaneously, she can be judgmental and harsh. Intrusive. But, all in all, even if some of the writing is excellent, the play is an unrelentingly tough watch.

• … Blackbird Hour at the Bush Theatre until 1 March
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• @AleksSierz