Review: Blue Door, Ustinov Studio, Bath

Blue Door is a remarkable production. Script, performers, music, setting, lights – all combined by the director – to absorb you whole. It is one of those theatre moments where you utterly vanish as yourself, and enter without question into the world you are offered.

The story – the stories – are of badness. And of good. And of confusion. Centuries of jaw-clenching racism, hatred, fear, abuse and deep, deep pain – of all of these, you will hear. But you will also hear of love. Compassion. Wit. Wisdom. Kindness. And determination.

“How do you review that?” I sometimes wonder, leaving a play that needs my best words to share well what I saw. Here, it’s not just about my best words – because I am white; I pause – I lack the shared experience of being black in a white world. Can I really come to this and offer insight?

But what is theatre for, if not to take you to places you could never otherwise go? (The best answer, of course, is to see it for yourself).

Ray Fearon as Lewis in Tanya Barfield’s ‘Blue Door’ at the Ustinov Studio, Bath

Ray Fearon plays Lewis, a philosophy of mathematics professor who’s especially interested in the idea of time. He is black. He questions his black identity regularly. He sees his own blackness through white eyes again and again. He is married to a white woman, who berates him – then leaves him – because he did not do what she told him he must: attend the Million Man March (where black men were asked to show commitment to family and community). I told you there was wit.

And Lewis is also a son, a brother, grandson and great-grandson. And, during one night of painful insomnia, we hear his own tales of struggling in a white world, wrapped within the stories of these men in his life – all played by Fehinti Balogun. Stories of slave life, of brutality, abuse, of corrupted white power, blind privilege and hatred.

Fehinti Balogun gives a series of powerful performances in ‘Blue Door’

He resists the stories, and joins in. And, as the experiences come closer, he relives them and he learns. He learns to understand why his father beats him hard – physically and psychologically – and was rarely sober. Why his brother ODed and his grandfather “hobo-ed”.

Tanya Barfield’s muscular script and Eleanor Rhode’s superb direction make for a pacy, all-embracing roller-coaster. It’s towering storytelling, brought to life by great performances. Barfield’s warm, wry voice sings through the play: a peaceful wisdom and compassion, shining light on one family’s generations-long experience of being black in America.

“Fearon and Balogun’s performances are the kind you catch only a few times in a theatre-going life”

Fearon and Balogun’s performances are the kind you catch only a few times in a theatre-going life: heart-led, head-strong, true theatre magic that happens as you watch. And the audience is always played with – we, too, are seen and invoked regularly (watch out for the stand-up routine and what happens in the songs).

This play is a joy. A joy, from atrocities? From the complexities it opens to the air? But yes. Because it is brave and open and truthful, and that has to offer hope.

Go. While you can. Go.

Blue Door continues at the Ustinov Studio, Bath until March 9. For more info, visit www.theatreroyal.org.uk/event/blue-door