Boi Boi Is Dead
West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
2 stars

AS THE sun sets over a Zimbabwean township, a family returns home from a funeral.

It’s an evocative opening to Boi Boi Is Dead but its promise Zodwa Nyoni is unable to sustain in this, her first full-length play, as she explores the effect of the title character’s death on an already fractured homestead.

A successful Afro-jazz trumpeter, the legacy of Boi Boi (Jack Benjamin) is revealed through flashbacks and the struggle for matriarchal power between his common law wife Miriam (Angela Wynter) and his estranged wife Stella (Lynette Clarke).

It’s a struggle with some memorable scenes, as when an instrument hanging in an empty wardrobe brings back memories of happier times or when good-time girl Stella arrives to deliver some of the play’s best lines, advising her teenage daughter to travel to England to “meet the Simon Cowells of the world.”

The staging of the inter-generational, cross-cultural kitchen-sink drama has some notable touches too.

Michael Henry’s score is effective at conjuring moods, while Francisco Rodriguez-Weil’s design is elegant in its simplicity, with cut-out pieces of furniture descending from the ceiling and miniature models of the township doubling as chairs and cupboards.

Yet these details are unable to mask the central weakness in the character sketches. The relationships often lack believability and while the audience sees Miriam struggling with her identity, the motivation for the actions of other family members remain unclear.

Thus it’s difficult to feel any empathy with the characters or, crucially, to have much interest in the secret at the heart of the play.

Runs until March 7, box office: wyp.org.uk
SUSAN DARLINGTON