Amy Jephta’s A Good House offers provocative fun alongside its perception at the Royal Court
“A place where respectable, decent people reside”
A co-production between Royal Court Theatre and Bristol Old Vic in association with The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, South Africa, A Good House sees David Byrne’s Royal Court stretching out its partnerships in interesting ways, while maintaining that crucial element of having a really good play to hand as well. Amy Jeptha’s drama actually fits in with a lineage of former Royal Court play Clybourne Park, itself a response to A Raisin in the Sun, all looking at various intersections of home ownership, race and capitalist mindsets.
Stillwater is a firmly middle-class housing development in an archetypal suburb and its residents are determined to keep it that way. A makeshift shack has popped up on one of the vacant lots and so Lynette, the estate agent who manages the place and also lives there with partner Christopher, is whipping up support for an eviction order. She wants to get Sihle and Bonolo onboard, their wealthy black neighbours for two years who they’ve barely acknowledged, along with actual newcomers, the younger and white Andrew and Jess but all of their conversations are freighted with tension.
Lynette’s assumption is that the interlopers are black and Christopher has no compunction complaining about affirmative action out loud, belying their performative liberalism. Sandwich shop manager Andrew and yoga teacher Jess are clearly the recipients of generational wealth as they’ve overpaid for their place but money isn’t the only thing they’ve inherited in a shocking moment of unconscious racial bias. Now a finance manager, Sihle was brought up in a such a shack as the one in question but the “bougie as fuck” Bonolo won’t even acknowledge her relatives who still live in one, everything dialling up the pressure as they’re pressed to be the face of the campaign to demolish it.
Nancy Medina’s production relishes all these complications as every single interaction becomes trigger-loaded, the idea of community as something organic exploded as we discover how stage-managed it is in the name of maintaining house prices. Mimî M Khayisa and Sifiso Mazibuko are phenomenal as Bonolo and Sihle, her affected pretensions (the wine pouring!) and unwillingness to let any racial undertones go unmarked a stark contrast to his effortful perma-smile, the genuine chemistry between them making them both hilarious and deeply empathetic.
Kai Luke Brummer’s Andrew and Robyn Rainsford’s Jess are enjoyably uptight, particularly in the aftermath of putting their foot in it, and Scott Sparrow is brilliantly awful as the toe-curling Christopher, all wide-legged stance and botched fist bumps. Olivia Darnley’s Lynette is given slightly less to work with , though there’s no mistaking the hypocrisy she tries to hide with her breezy tone. ULTZ’s set design plays with the space interestingly to take us from home to home, the ever-growing shack always visible in back, constantly asking the question about how far we’re willing to go to fit in and get into that elusive WhatsApp group.
