Abroad

Seize the Day

 (Tricycle Theater, London; 296 seats; £20 $32 top)

By KAREN FRICKER

Kwame Kwei-Armah's "Seize the Day" sets Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, center, as a TV personality who becomes London's first black mayoral candidate.

A Tricycle Theater presentation of a play in two acts written and directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah. Sets and costumes, Rosa Maggiora.
 
Jeremy Charles - Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Lavelle - Aml Ameen
Howard Jones - Karl Collins
Susan - Sharon Duncan-Brewster
Jennifer Thompson - Jaye Griffiths
Ravinder Persaud - Abhin Galeya
Alice Charles - Amelia Lowdell
 

The ever-zeitgeisty British playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah's latest offers an enticingly plausible proposition: What if, in the momentum following Obama's election in the U.S., a black man ran for higher office in the U.K.? "Seize the Day" follows the fictional fate of Jeremy Charles, a TV personality nearly transformed into London's first black mayoral candidate. However, what begins as an entertaining and insightful look into the inner workings of the U.K.'s political establishment and its ethnic communities gets bogged down in overplotting and preachiness.

Kwei-Armah's production starts out fast and clever with a projected clip of Jeremy (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith), live on TV, chancing on a black gang attacking another black youth, and breaking it up by slapping one of the attackers. This random event sends Jeremy on dual, and eventually conflicting, paths. He becomes an unlikely public hero and therefore the candidate of color that a high-profile team of ethnic minority political fixers led by Howard Jones (Karl Collins) have been looking for.

But Jeremy also decides to mentor Lavelle (Aml Ameen), the boy he slapped, discovering that the reality of life for low-earning black Britons is more complex and grimmer than he -- who rose out of the housing projects, all the while trying to convince himself that race no longer matters -- was previously willing to believe.

The material is typically fresh and topical, but dramaturgical pruning would have helped to navigate audiences through what becomes a confusing and at times implausible web of stories and themes. The political plotline is the strongest element here. As Jeremy is spun one way and another by his minders, Kwei-Armah vividly illustrates the moral morass people of color face as they attempt to enter the white-dominated political establishment. 

A significant problem, however, is Kwei-Armah's stilted and objectified portrayal of women. A sexual tension subplot in Jeremy's relationship with political adviser Jennifer (Jaye Griffiths) feels unnecessary, and the characterization of his cold white wife (Amelia Lowdell) and hot black mistress (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) are as stereotypical as those boilerplate descriptions suggest.

The character of Lavelle suffers the opposite problem. Kwei-Armah is trying to make this young man represent too many things, particularly in an improbable second-act plot twist involving Lavelle's journalist uncle who has been imprisoned in, of all places, Gaza.

At this point the narrative seems to spiral out of the playwright's control. The overall thrust of the playwright's argument appears to be that radicalism, rather than continued assimilation, may be the way forward for Britain's ethnic minority communities -- a bracing and plausible suggestion, but one that needs more focus. 

This is the second in the Tricycle's current series of three plays by contemporary black British writers, which started with Roy Williams' underpowered prison drama "Category B" and will conclude with Bola Agbaje's immigration-themed "Detaining Justice."

One of the series' emerging pleasures is the opportunity it affords a top-notch shared acting ensemble to strut its stuff.

Collins, who played a down-and-out convict in Williams' play, is brilliantly convincing, and often very funny, as the fast-talking but morally compromised Howard. Boyishly handsome Holdbrook-Smith looks right and makes a good start as Jeremy, but buckles somewhat under the pressures of the role, lapsing into predictable gestures and expressions. Griffiths and Duncan-Brewster bring remarkable interest and charisma to the limited female roles provided them.

The fact that the plays run in repertory probably explains the extreme simplicity of Rosa Maggiora's shared set of metal railings and platforms, which Kwei-Armah and video designer Dick Straker attempt to liven up here with projections establishing various locations. The screen serves an ironic and probably unintended purpose, however, in underlining how little this event feels like it needed to take place on a stage: The complexity and potential depth of this story may have made better sense as TV drama material.

Lighting, James Farncombe; sound, Tom Lishman; video, Dick Straker for Mesmer; production stage manager, Shaz McGee. Opened, reviewed Nov. 2, 2009. Running time: 2 HOURS.
 

With: John Boyega, Cecilia Noble.