The Fellowship
Hampstead Theatre 
1 July 2022

IT’S great to see Hampstead Theatre stepping out of its comfort zone with this unequivocal, in-depth penetration of a world where cultural origin is a daily call to arms.

The fellowship of the title is the bond between two sisters of Caribbean descent who painstakingly carve out uncharted lives in an England where being “black” not only shapes their lives but continues repeatedly to blitz them with heartbreak and trauma. 

It’s also the baton-passing journey of three generations from Windrush, through the Broadwater Farm eruption, to the new, destabilising world of Brexit and Covid where the future is up for grabs, and all are at the mercy of forces greater than themselves. 

Cherrelle Skeete and Suzette Llewellyn expertly capture the verve and sisterly solidarity of Dawn and Marcia as well as their uniqueness. When they dance, when they drink, when they quirkily bash their bosoms together like stags locking horns, their laughter is infectious and their mutual understanding a given.  

But all the time the world intervenes and the struggle is paramount. Marcia is a barrister, making her formidable way in a white dominated world; Dawn is an over-anxious mother, recovering from the potentially racist killing of her older boy. 

The sisters’ mother, Sylvia, appears only once as a figment of Dawn’s imagination. Perfectly portrayed by Yasmin Mwanza, she somehow personifies the past for all Caribbean people as she twirls gracefully in her vivid orange frock and barely stoppable dancing slippers. Trevor Laird as Dawn’s other half, Tony, brings us a more stereotypical but engaging figure — the black activist he once was thrumming at a low but incessant volume deep in his soul. 

More fascinating still is the relationship between Dawn’s remaining son Jermaine and his self-styled white trash girlfriend Simone. 

These are the youth of today, evolving even as we watch into a force that is aeons away not only from the Windrush generation but even from their own troubled parents. This is cultural metamorphosis pulsing before our eyes. Ethan Hazzard is wonderfully truthful as Jermaine, and Rosie Day tough and fragile in equal measure as the white girl who spontaneously loves him. 

Writer Roy Williams needs no introduction. He, together with famed director Paulette Randall, is successful in lifting the lid on these people and displaying the palette of colours that paint their lives.  

The play, itself, is uneven, though, with ideas half formed and structural glitches. It would also be good to feel a living, breathing outside world instead of being confined by the surreal, disconnected set that isolates the action. In fact, a better-crafted play is still an option.

But you can’t ignore the veracity. And when Dawn blurts out from the heart: “I’d love to have a little privilege in my life... just an ‘ickle’ bit’,” audience members in my row audibly sigh in spontaneous agreement: “Yes. Oh yes.”

The mechanics of the play could be improved but the impact is profound. And we all leave, unexpectedly moved and wiser.