Just five weeks after seeing his UK debut Octoroon at the Orange Tree Theatre, there I was at Hampstead Theatre seeing the entirely different but just as impressive Gloria, which does prove Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a major new playwriting talent, though how I’m going to write about this one without spoiling it I don’t know………
We’re with the ‘assistants’ in the outer office of a magazine publisher where everyone seems to be playing politics to further their careers, except long-serving Lorin in the next office and Gloria, who everyone seems to see as a bit weird. Dean is the only one who went to Gloria’s party the night before, and he only went because he thought the others were going. We’re lulled into a false sense of security until there’s a major incident in the office as Act I closes. When we return we meet two of the characters from Act One, and another we hadn’t seen, to see how they are responding to earlier events and how they, and the world, reacts to and processes such things in this day and age. It ends very suddenly, perhaps too suddenly.
The change of tone is indeed dramatic, from everyday life in a modern office to cynical, tasteless exploitation of events. Like Octoroon, its structurally clever and very unpredictable. They make a big thing of avoiding spoilers, to the point of sealing four pages of the programme which you can have broken by the ushers at the interval; a theatrical first, I think. Michael Longhurst’s staging and Lizzie Clachan’s design serve the play well and there are six fine actors, three of which play two roles and two play three. I first saw Kae Alexander in Kiss Me Kate in her final year at GSMD, then she impressed me in the Open Air Theatre’s Peter Pan, now she’s hugely impressive as both Kendra and Jenna. Bayo Gbadamosi impresses too in three very different roles as intern, barista and media darling.
I’m now waiting for his next play with more than a touch of anticipation.
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