Theatre Review: #Typical by Ryan Calais Cameron

BY RYAN CALAIS CAMERON
DIRECTED BY ANASTASIA OSEI-KUFFOUR
STARRING RICHARD BLACKWOOD

A powerful exploration of racism and how British society stereotypes Black masculinity. I have to admit that I went into this (online) show without knowing the story of Christopher Alder, but it is a heartbreaking example of the institutional racism and police brutality which recent events and Black Lives Matter have brought to the fore.

In 1998, Christopher Alder, a former British army paratrooper, was injured during a fight outside of a night club in Hull and taken to hospital for treatment to a head injury. He was arrested by two police officers for a breach of the peace after apparently becoming aggressive and taken to the police station. CCTV footage from the custody suite shows him being dragged in by officers and left lying face down on the floor, motionless, with his trousers around his ankles. Officers stand around laughing while he lies there, dying, for 10 minutes. A post-mortem failed to establish the cause of Christopher’s death, but a later inquest returned a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’. Five Humberside police officers were put on trial for the manslaughter of Christopher, but the case later collapsed, and all officers were cleared. In 2011, the Government publicly apologised for breaching Christopher’s right to life, right not to be tortured or treated inhumanely, and the right not to be discriminated against.

Photo credit: Franklyn Rogers, from Soho Theatre.

This roughly one-hour one-man show is a real tour-de-force for Richard Blackwood, who manages to convincingly portray both Christopher himself and the characters he encounters over the course of his fateful last evening against a very plain, minimalistic decor. The story is told through music, lighting and Blackwood’s face and body, which seem to effortlessly shapeshift from middle-aged, slightly overweight, to tall and debonair, to somewhat shy and awkward, from aggressive punter in a nightclub to drunk girl on a night out.

The show starts with the oldest cliché in the book: a man waking up and getting ready to go out, while musing about his circumstances. And yet, in this context, the cliché works – because we find out this is a man like any other, his race doesn’t matter at all. At least not while he is at home. We discover he is middle-aged, divorced, looking for a career change, looking forward to spending time with his two boys the next weekend, feeling rather lonely, starting to worry about aging, not doing too great a job of looking after himself with food and exercise. He sounds like so many people we know, and yet completely himself and unique at the same time, with the rhythm and lilt of his delivery. There is wit and self-deprecation in there a-plenty, as well as word associations and clever one-liners, such as ‘I scare myself half to life’ when looking in the mirror, or ‘Marriage is the process of finding out the type of man your wife prefers to you’. Not knowing what to expect, I almost had the feeling I was watching a comedy show – and that innocence is perhaps the best attitude to have when sitting down to watch this show, because what follows comes as a complete shock.

Christopher goes out with his friends, commenting that they are ‘just old men talking about old shit’. Even though his friends seem to have sunk into domesticity and blandness, he is nevertheless determined to enjoy himself. As he queues to get into the nightclub, as he dances inside, as he chats up a girl, he encounters numerous micro-aggressions, which end up not being all that micro. Every time, he talks himself down from losing his temper and reacting violently. He keeps repeating: ‘They need me to be the bad guy. I know the cost. Leave me alone.’

The scenes at the hospital and the police station are brutal but incredibly effective. They are also, mercifully, much shorter than the humorous scenes establishing the character in the first half, or the growing discomfort we experience as witnesses to both the overt and hidden discrimination he experiences as he goes about a very normal Saturday evening in a city centre somewhere in England. There is a crescendo of abuse, but above all there is a complete unwillingness to listen or to see the person in front of them as anything other than the stereotype of aggressive black guy. Holding his hand to his head wound, Christopher keeps repeating: ‘I am the victim here. I just want to be heard. Nobody’s hearing me.’ The final scenes, with the repetition of the words ‘I can’t breathe’ and the shaky camerawork, have an added poignancy after the death of George Floyd. Blackwood’s face fills the whole screen and forces us to look into his eyes. It is impossible to look away, it is impossible to remain unmoved.

First performed in 2019 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, before transferring to Soho Theatre for a sell-out run, this exciting hybrid of theatre and film was shot during the pandemic on location at Soho Theatre. It certainly deserves to be seen, shared and discussed far more widely, so it’s good to know that it is now available as Theatre on Demand from Soho Theatre and Nouveau Riche productions.

Highly recommended for all of you who have missed theatre as much as I have.

Photo credit: Franklyn Rogers.