Butetown, Cardiff
Sun 3 Mar
words: LLOYD GRIFFITHS
★★☆☆☆
National Theatre Wales have set a very high standard in recent years for producing theatre which has something of the tragic Greek chorus about it. Crowds have found themselves at once witness to, yet almost part of the action, of their site-specific productions. Thinking back to NTW’s best work, it’s often been that the apparently unseen history of places has been dramatically implicit; such as the religiose aspect of community found in The Passion in Port Talbot’s industrial betrayal.
It’s hardly a surprise then that Cardiff’s historic Butetown was chosen as the location for De Gabay, last Sunday’s opening of NTW’s third season. Tucked between the city centre and the now somewhat corporatised Cardiff Bay, it’s easy to bypass an area which actually has a diverse and confident identity. As you’re welcomed, instead of a ticket you’re handed a Butetown passport – the young female Somali face on mine suggesting genuine participatory potential as you’re invited into a community more concrete than you may expect. Early scenes see small groups invited into homes in the area and an excellent community choir finale later in the day, however, it’s a sense of place which is largely undeveloped, and one sadly lacking in the narrative solidity needed to do it justice.
De Gabay is a production with poetry at its heart – mirroring the thriving young Somali poets in the area – and there are attempts at demonstrating the common, unifying power of spoken word. The climax at the Senedd for example takes the form of hip-hop style poetry, spat as an angry, political counterpoint to the bureaucratic language of the “public servants” we see ignorant of the community. However, moments such as this have to be frustratingly grasped at in light of a disparate narrative which never really seems like it may cohere.
It felt at times that it was assumed that the mere fact that the audience is watching a site-specific work would be enough to coalesce a feeling of community, but the failure of the play is that the redemptive potential of the surroundings, the locality and its poetry is never fictionalised enough. Many scenes pass without meaningful reference to characters and substantial details are instead replaced by an over reliance on poetic fables which by the end feel arbitrary.
While other NTW productions have felt thrillingly unmediated, De Gabay lacks the narrative coherence needed to express the kind of collective emotions that underused members of a mostly excellent cast sometimes display. There is symbolic eloquence to the scene at the Coal Exchange where past and present clans act out their historical differences, but this is something preceded by separate parades (on separate routes) which fail to make evident this potential confrontation.
Perhaps the play is meant to be a more transcendental look at community, but it would be a foolish abstraction to think that this is entirely possible with the absence of factual and autobiographical details apparent throughout the play. In the end, in spite of a beautiful finale where a 12-foot iron man clad in De Gabay’s poems and words walks into the sea, one leaves feeling disappointed that the undoubted talent behind the performance wasn’t allowed the poetic journey and pathos they deserved.