Theatre Peckham’s Young, Gifted and Black season kicks off with Corey Bovell’s 32 Peak Street
“You’ve just got to hang on for dear life”
As the opening show in Theatre Peckham’s Young, Gifted and Black season, Corey Bovell’s 32 Peak Street explores just how difficult it can be to get on the property ladder if you’re young, gifted, black or any combination of these or indeed other factors. Its South London focus lends the play what feels like a hard-won relevance and Gbolahan Obisesan’s production blends a good measure of comedy into the drama to make it spring off the stage.
Jesse and Cristal have dreams, big dreams for their future. But for now, they’re bedding down in the cramped Jesse’s childhood home, a Lewisham council flat still occupied by his father Karl, self-medicating grief at his wife’s passing with alcohol and Bob Marley songs. They made a deal to live like this so they could save for a deposit but little knownst to Cristal, Jesse’s barbershop business has been struggling and he’s hardly any savings left, something thrown into stark relief when Cristal announces she’s expecting and so the time is now right to move.
Largely set in the flat’s small garden space, with its broken gate and nosy neighbours, Bovell eloquently covers a wide range of issues, even within this domestic context. The relationships between Black fathers and sons and how difficult they can be no matter which generation we’re looking at, the outsized impact of gentrification particularly on disrupting minority community spaces, the enduring crisis of notions of masculinity stopping men from being honest, the power of St Lucian rum…it’s all in here.
Keeping it a taut four-hander means we get to really dig into much of this. Bovell plays Jesse with a bolshy sense of charisma, initially open and warmly funny but increasingly darkening as his dilemma deepens. Around him, Trevor Laird’s Karl does well to find moments of tenderness and connection through his drunken daze and Tej Obano as pal Kieran is interestingly drawn as a figure of contrast who is honest, but perhaps not quite honest enough to truly help his best friend in a time of real crisis.
Rachael Ridley’s Cristal rounds out the cast as the play’s most fascinating character. Motivated by an unsettled upbringing, there’s such emotive power in her determination to change things up for her own family and to not let anything stand in its way – a cracking performance. The production uses music brilliantly too, a banging soundtrack covering a hefty number of scene changes easily, but also pointing out moments of real drama when the music no longer plays. Strong work.