Landmark though it is, Ntozake Shange's 1975 emotive, darkly comic choreopoem of vignettes about life as a Black woman has scarcely been revived in the UK. Perhaps it’s simply the case that its concern with the African-American experience has inevitably meant that the US is where it”s most frequently revived: in terms of straight up box-office, Ryan Calais Cameron’s recent answer play For Black Boys… about the Black British male experience has been for more successful, even if it’ll probably never have quite the cultural impact.
Whatever the case, we finally get to see how Shange’s great work stands up in modern Britain as the recently upgraded Yard Theatre drops its first premiere since it reopened with a new production by Diane Page, with original music by Jammz. Tatenda Naomi Matsvai, Nadine Higgin, Cherrelle Skeete, Alex Thomas-Smith and Ibilola Rossi co-star.
