London theater critics have given mixed reviews to the one-act musical Black Love, about siblings Aurora and Orion and their investigation of the Black experience through real and imagined worlds, which plays a limited run through April 23 at the Kiln Theatre. The creative team includes Chinonyerem Odimba (book, lyrics, direction), Ben & Max Ringham (music), Richard Kent (production design), Richard Howell (lights), Joel Price (sound), Candida Caldicot (musical direction), and Celise Hicks (movement direction). The cast includes Nicholle Cherrie (Roo), Beth Elliott (Lois), and Nathan Queeley-Dennis (Orion).
Cherrie and Queeley-Dennis (photo by Camilla Greenwell)
Evening Standard (Nick Curtis): A lush, wraparound, jazz-funk keyboard soundtrack provides the spine for this chamber musical, a jubilant celebration of black affection and identity tempered by white interference. It’s a likeable, often joyful but ultimately lopsided show, part family story and part polemic. … [Odimba’s] in-the-round staging is intimate and welcoming. The three performers generate a warm rapport with the audience and each other. Their singing is pleasing and heartfelt rather than West-End glossy but that adds to the charm. The celebratory tone is at odds with the issues, though. 3 out of 5 stars.
Time Out (Andrzej Lukowski): There are plenty of good things about the play. The euphoric ending doesn’t feel entirely earned, but it’s a giddy high point nonetheless. … These recordings [of Black people discussing the importance of Black love] almost seem to be the centre of the whole show: intimate, comforting, uncomplicated. The story seems oddly dissonant to that. … It’s perfectly reasonable to take the view that I might not appreciate a show so explicitly based on the Black experience. … Nonetheless, I do feel I got what Odimba was aiming for, and there’s a lot to like about her show, but I just struggled to get on board. 3 out of 5 stars.
Times (Clive Davis): Some of my happiest theatrical memories are associated with the Kiln — or the Tricycle, as I still tend to think of it — so I find myself wondering how such a clumsy piece could have been chosen to launch the venue’s new season. A musical play written and directed by the Nigerian-British writer Chinonyerem Odimba, Black Love was greeted with rapturous reviews last year when it toured on Paines Plough’s pop-up Roundabout stage. Far from being innovative, it serves up a tired blend of Afro-mysticism, bland songs and agitprop. 1 out of 5 stars.
WhatsOnStage (Alun Hood): The lived Black experience can’t be neatly encapsulated into a streamlined 90 minutes of stage time, and Odimba doesn’t attempt to do that, instead giving us a piece that challenges as much as it entertains: Black Love is messy, ambitious, raucous, frequently deeply moving and, at times, undeniably self-indulgent. It doesn’t offer a coherency so much as a series of snapshots into these young people’s urban lives. … Despite the flaws, and the overriding impression of this still being a work-in-progress, Black Love is a refreshingly original piece of theatre, provocative but suffused with affection. It’s a celebration and a cry of pain, and it’s not like anything else currently on any London stage. 3 out of 5 stars.