Elmina's Kitchen

By Robert Iles - 20th Mar 2005

This production of Kwame Kwei-Armah's Elmina's Kitchen could hardly have been more timely with the case of the shooting of Letisha Shakespeare and Charlebe Ellis resulting in the jailing of four 20-something black men last week.

The play is set in a failing cafe run by Deli, a failed boxer. Deli's son Ashley is beginning to run free of his control and Deli's brother is shortly due out of prison. The cafe seems to have only a couple of customers, Digger (a local hoodlum) and Baygee, an older man who buys and sells fake designer goods. Into this group comes Anastasia, employed as a chef but angling for something more. Everything turns sours when Deli's brother is shot dead on his way home from prison. Clifton, Deli's estranged father returns and Anastasia convinces Deli to use his brother's money to revamp the cafe into a West Indian Fast Food restaurant ("fast and West Indian, these words don't go together") but this involves moving Digger out and Digger doesn't take kindly to the change.

The descent into violence as Deli tries to protect Ashley and keep his life together is rapid and tragic. "A man lives like he can" and, it would seem, dies like he lives. Don't get me wrong, this is not a depressing, angst-ridden night out. Actually, its a very funny play a lot of the time, well-drawn characters, amusing situations and some lovely one-liners keep the audience engaged and entertained and the live music played by Juldeh Camara and Atongo Zimba was superb. But through it all, there is a strand of threat and danger. Digger, he buys debts and then enforces them with a high degree of violence, but for all that, he is not a randomly violent man, violence, and his gun, are a means to an end, essential business tools. When Ashely askes for agun, or to help with his business he refuses, only turining when Deli, who aslo has violence in his past, turns against him.

In any period this would be an excellent play, in these times when most of society is trying hard to come to terms with the idea that sub-machine guns are used to solve arguments, it is partcularly important. The play offers us no answers, nor does it seek to justify or explain, it is a story, a sad tale in which we can see the inevitable coming but at no time feel that anyone actually deserves the sh*t they're getting. An excellent night out.

Robert Iles