Hang Time review – a chilling picture of the horrors of racial violence
Royal Lyceum theatre, EdinburghThree men bicker and reflect like they’re chatting at a bar – yet this grimly beautiful piece of theatre at the Edinburgh international festival won’t let you...
By Mark Fisher · The Guardian Culture
Royal Lyceum theatre, Edinburgh Three men bicker and reflect like they’re chatting at a bar – yet this grimly beautiful piece of theatre at the Edinburgh international festival won’t let you forget their fate Three men are shooting the breeze. “We’re just talking – man to man to man,” says Slim (Kamal Bolden), an ex-con who believes in looking after number one. In a literal sense, he is right. They are just talking. In this short, grimly beautiful production, written and directed by Zora Howard for New York’s Flea theatre , they have the kind of all-male conversation you might hear in any bar – at turns needling, teasing, argumentative, romantic, trivial and spiky. They like nothing more than when an attractive woman walks by. Where Slim is always out for personal gain – a quick buck, a sexual misadventure – Bird (Julian Rozzell) carries the wisdom of age. He scorns Slim’s quick-fix philosophy, favouring old-fashioned values of loyalty, decency and privacy. Blood (Bryce Foley), the youngest of the three, is the romantic: the one who dreams of life beyond streets that seem to have stripped a community of ambition. Continue reading...