Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Tyrone Huggins, Trevor Laird, Tonderai Munyevu, Dorcas Sebuyange.
By denying the inalienable truth of the past, we suffer the fools of the future, instead of celebrating the fact, we experience the danger of lies and slurs becoming the norm, it is this misrepresentation of history that brings us the insanity of Presidents and the vileness of certain groups and their unfathomable so called logic, better to admit in the open and let the fools run, that the country we live in, no matter where we live, is made of a history that is more diverse, more beautiful than we understand, that we all walk, we walk in the shadow of our ancestors.
Black Men Walking is a production that epitomises this ethos, this belief but one that also sees the writer, the rap artist Testament, embrace that other barrier in life, not only of the attitude in the British psyche of politics, colour and race but also that other divisive issue, that between the generations, of the young who have been let down by society, by government, by family, and those to whom they cannot see how that generation cannot integrate as they did, forgetting all the while what it was to be young, rightly angry and victimised.
The long walk undertaken by anyone, those that are willing to be respectful to the very aspect of nature of their surroundings, it seems these days to be a ridiculed pastime in itself, one to which those caught up in the now have let slip from their minds as they forget in their D.N.A that they come from people who walked, not just for fun or to see the countryside in bloom, but because they had to, because society ever in flux sometimes demands that you leave the place you might once have called a home. It is in this long walk that we get to understand ourselves, our own needs, desires and thoughts for the future and one without the noise of the modern day and constant need of being in touch.
Black Men Walking is an extraordinary play, yet one that is beautifully simple, written with a keen sense of observation, of understanding and one you cannot help but feel drawn to warmly. With a sense of perfection running through the four actors’ performances, with a search for the truth of how it feels to walk through the history laid down by your ancestors and the closed mind we put up when we are hurting, Black Men Walking is the march through Time as we question history itself.
Ian D. Hall