'Little Baby Jesus' review or 'Second/third/fourth coming.'

Little Baby Jesus, Arinzé Kene

Orange Tree Theatre, 22nd October 2019

Written for The Guardian 

Here is a play that will be racing through you, making you laugh and think, long after you’ve left the theatre. It is by Arinzé Kene, who penned the smash hit Misty, a searing one-man show that burned with the heat of a live gig. This earlier play is about three inner-city teenagers on the verge of adulthood, each a little scared about who they might become. Like Misty, it is a genre-defying theatrical hybrid – a thrilling combination of performance poetry, standup comedy and good old-fashioned storytelling.

The energy levels in Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s live-wire production are something else. Before the show begins, the actors chat cheekily with the audience. As the stories unfurl, that easy interaction remains. The actors make eyes at the audience, tease us, even sit on us. With the performers perched on a barely raised tarmac platform – their playground for the night – there’s only the flimsiest of fourth walls. Everything they feel, we feel, too.

Fynn-Aiduenu won this year’s JMK award for young directors, and he is clearly a talent with great bravado and heart. He takes Kene’s script as an invitation to play and runs – no, sprints – with it. Any moment that can be animated is, and with gusto. A fight in the playground becomes a Jurassic scrap; singing in the shower transforms into a three-way dance-off; and a mere walk through the street turns into a performance. It’s brilliant fun and a reminder of just how exposed and overblown everything feels when we are young.

The actors work in synchronicity yet with such a sense of freedom. Khai Shaw is our clown for the night, the disruptor of classes who only wants to be heard. Anyebe Godwin has an incredible stillness as mature-beyond-his-years Kehinde, and Rachel Nwokoro is captivating as the hard-as-nails-but-soft-as-butter Joanne. As the religious references roll in, and the huge halo light above Tara Usher’s set tilts suggestively, these teenagers’ lives take on a spiritual glow and grow bigger, infused with meaning and grandeur. It is an extraordinary act of generosity from Kene – and an act of faith.