CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Dutchman, Tristan Bates Theatre London
Assault on racist attitudes in the US of the 1960s still packs a punch
Power play: Cheska Hill-Wood and James Barnes in Dutchman
[Diana Patient]
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AS PART of Black History Month, Kaitlin Argeaux has resurrected Amiri Baraka’s 1964 political allegory Dutchman in the appropriately intimate confines of Tristan Bates Theatre.
Set in a New York subway car, the 50-minute play revolves around the encounter between an enigmatic white woman, the thirty-something Lula, and Clay, a smart-suited black man in his twenties.
The capricious Lula (Cheska Hill-Wood) is soon revealed as a metaphoric representation of privileged white America. Her switches between lubricious hedonism and bored disdain for her fellow passenger are a broad swing at racist attitudes from Baraka.
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