KEN TOWL reviews a new work of poetry, theatre and dance, performed at the under-used Fairfield Halls’ ‘Wreck’
Love’s labours: Reece Richards and Sharon Rose in Anastasia Osei-Kuffour’s Love Steps
Anastasia Osei-Kuffour has put together a (mostly) fast-moving everywoman story that tracks a thirtysomething and her search for love in the 21st Century. In it, the writer and director puts her protagonist, Anna – and by extension the actor Sharon Rose – through her paces.
Poor Anna. She is desperate to find a partner. You can’t blame her. Love is all around her. Her friends Shannice and Eva tell her she needs to get on with it. Her father tells her she is not getting any younger, her mother, the elders at her church, all agree… You get the picture.
So, through the medium of poetry, theatre and dance, we embark on a tour of Anna’s sub-optimal love life.
Love Steps starts very slowly, tentatively, like Anna’s first attempts to find love. After 10 minutes of fuzzy electronica behind Rose as she languidly strikes poses, the play starts for real and the character of Anna hits us, metaphorically, in the face. In a rhyming verse form that sounds like an amalgam of rap and Shakespeare, she tells us that she seeks “oneness, the missing piece”.
She dances with a silent partner (performed by Reece Richards) whom, it becomes apparent, is not real, a mere fantasy of a man who dances alongside her, but all of the spoken word is Anna’s. He is a mime; he is literally only going through the motions.
Anna’s strictly traditional church values and super-high standards seem to be a hindrance to her success. When asked if she would ask a man out, she is shocked, mortified by the very idea. She is a “queen”. She is told she needs to try to date outside of her list. It is a long list.
She tries online dating, and this gives Richards the opportunity to play a host of unsuitable suitors in a rapidfire barrage of shifting accents, gurning face and comic body language. Love Steps is at its best when the protagonists are given rein to spar against each other in the sort of cut and thrust that reminds you of the barbed chat between Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing.
It also satirically points up the manifold failings of men. Various types are skewered; perhaps the best is the one who uses the name “Lion”. When Anna asks him why he doesn’t use his real name, he says he doesn’t want anyone to know his real name. When she asks what it is, he says Lionel, hardly a testament to his powers of imagination. When she speaks to him on the phone and hears a young voice asking for daddy, she realises that Lionel is a lyin’ lion.
It is not all played for laughs. Osei-Kuffour has plenty to say about the place of black women in British society and the options that are open to them and the options that are not, as we follow her encounter with men at work, in a club or at church.
In an allusion to the recent episode Parliament,
“you can stand several times in the House of Commons
and still receive no summons”
we are reminded of how Diane Abbott tried to get the Speaker’s attention 46 times to be allowed to speak and was denied, even though the debate was about discriminatory language used against her. Of course, the comment is especially poignant given the latest developments in which there appears to have been an attempt to block her from standing for Parliament at all.
This was performed at the Fairfield Halls little-used (for public performances, anyway) “Wreck”, the Recreation space created during the controversial refurbishment of the halls, and now used by the little-seen Talawa Theatre Company. It was just a short run of a handful of performances here in Croydon, part of a national tour.
Love Steps slows a little towards the end, and its resolution is not entirely convincing but its last line is strong and is accompanied by the ticking of the biological clock that has been sounding in Anna’s head all along.
That said, Love Steps is an uplifting experience that showcases the talents of its performers and does so with a sharp wit and a warm humanity.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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