Golda Rosheuvel’s imperious, acid-tongued Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton shares much with feisty Guyanan-born Londoner PA Joyce in Emma Dennis Edwards and director Lynette Linton’s new play about the generational trauma carried and passed down by Black women.
Both characters steal every scene and compel the eye, both mask pain and loss with a caustic, imposing exterior. And in Roheuvel’s mesmerising performances, both allow powerful glimpses at the pain and pathos swimming behind that steely gaze. Up close in the Bush Theatre’s tiny auditorium, I could not take my eyes off her. Her craft and presence are exhilarating to witness.
Waiting for her daughter Erica (an impressive Leticia Wright) to arrive at the airport for a trip home to scatter the family matriarch’s ashes (Erica’s idea), buttoned-up Joyce has the audience rolling in their seats with precisely calibrated bullet after bullet about mothers and daughters, flying economy and the tardiness of “Caribbean time.” It’s a devastatingly dry comedic masterclass.
Erica, though born in the UK, has reclaimed her Caribbean roots in accent and swagger, while providing easy laughs with her self-improvement therapy-speak and declarations like, “I was watching a documentary… well, a TikTok…”
But, despite, some banter and the agreement that recent film Sinners is heaven thanks to “Michael B Jordan times two,” despite some brilliant moments of karaoke and a drunken night out, the distance and unspoken tension between them is clear. Erica remembers an absent mother and being raised primarily by her gran. At her core, it made her feel unloved and unwanted and has prevented present happiness.
Joyce had thrown herself into a career her mother had pushed her into, and traded financial success for personal desires, all to ensure her daughter had every chance she didn’t. Just as her mother had done, fleeing a terrible past trauma in Guyana. And so patterns repeat.
The Black playwrights examine the terrible toll on Black women who raise families, often without a man, holding everything together, never showing weakness or apparently needing anything for themselves. And, despite wishing the opposite, moulding their daughters into the same.
There are powerful moments, fluid swift flashbacks where both actresses play the grandmother and past iterations of themselves, easily shifting posture, expressions and voices back and forth. It’s cleverly staged, two backdrop walls projected with period wallpaper to signal past scenes, or the stunning waterfall they visit on their pilgrimage back home. As Erica tells us her about the crippling pain of feeling abandoned as a child, the wall turns transparent and we see Joyce silently screaming, frequently reliving that same past trauma her mother fled to protect her from, yet which, unaddressed, had haunted and left her unable to truly live.
The themes are potent and too often overlooked in theatre, the performances are absolutely superb and the staging is excellent. But the heady peaks of the early momentum and humour aren’t quite sustained by the patchy later attempts to tackle the dark heart of this all-too-universal story.
At just 80 minutes with no interval, the final revelations and rather mawkish ending feel rushed. A real shame and a sense of incomplete material elevated by the exceptional actors. I would have happily sat there much longer to bring this powerful story to the substantial conclusion it deserves.
NOT YOUR SUPERWOMAN: BUSH THEATRE TO NOVEMBER 1