Rakie Ayola and Debra Michaels in Strange Fruit at Bush Theatre. © Helen Murray
Alvin and Errol can’t picture much of a future for themselves. They’re young, Black and living in England in the 1980s, with an entire country and political system set against them. Angry and restless, they focus firmly on their past – the sunny Caribbean and heroic father they left behind when their mother brought them to England twenty years ago.
But when Alvin returns home from his grandfather’s funeral a new version of their past emerges and the two brothers are caught in a desperate struggle to unearth the truth about their existence.
Powerful and compelling, this faithful revival of Caryl Phillips’ 1980s masterpiece is the story of a family caught between two cultures, and the uncrossable no man’s land that can come between parents and their children. It is directed by Nancy Medina (The Half-God of Rainfall, Persistence of Memory, Dutchman).
Strange Fruit is the latest edition in the Passing the Baton series, following Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking in 2018. Passing The Baton is the Bush Theatre’s three-year commitment to re-staging masterpieces by artists of colour who have been written out of history.
Caryl was born in St.Kitts and brought up in England. He has written extensively for stage, radio, television and the screen. His first play, Strange Fruit premiered at the Sheffield Crucible Theatre in 1980, with subsequent productions in London and at the Liverpool Playhouse. Where there is Darkness and The Shelter both premiered at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In 2007 his adaptation of Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings for the stage toured Britain. His collaborated with Peter Hall, writing and co-producing a three hour film of his first novel, The Final Passage for Channel Four, for
whom he also wrote the film Playing Away. In 2001 he adapted V.S.Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur for Merchant Ivory Films. He is the author of numerous books of non-fiction and fiction. Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award, and A Distant Shore was long-listed for the Booker Prize and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for The European Tribe, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River, which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize.
He is a contributor to newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and holds honorary doctorates from a number of universities. He has taught at universities in Singapore, Ghana, Sweden and Barbados and is currently Professor of English at Yale University. His most recent novel, A View of the Empire at Sunset, was published in 2018.
Max Johns trained in theatre design at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and was the recipient of a BBC Performing Arts Fellowship in 2015. Prior to this he worked for a number of years as a designer in Germany. His most recent UK productions include Rust for Hightide/the Bush, The Half God Of Rainfall for Kiln/Birmingham Rep/Fuel, Wendy and Peter Pan for The Royal Lyceum Edinburgh, Kes and Random for Leeds Playhouse, Utility for the Orange Tree Theatre, Buggy Baby for the Yard Theatre, Yellowman for The Young Vic, Baddies for Synergy Theatre Project, Fidelio for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Enron for the Egg, There Shall Be Fireworks for the Plasticine Men, Twelfth Night for the Orange Tree Theatre, Life Raft, Medusa, and Under a Cardboard Sea for Bristol Old Vic, Strawberry and Chocolate for Tobacco Factory Theatres, Infinity Pool for Bedlam, Bucket List for Theatre Ad Infinitum, and Hamlet and All’s Well That Ends Well for Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory. Max has also had work produced at the V&A and Theatre Royal Bath. Forthcoming productions include King John at the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Eleanor Rhode.
Nancy Medina is originally from Brooklyn NY, and currently based in Bristol. She is the 2018 RTST Sir Peter Hall Director Award winner and will be collaborating with Royal & Derngate and English Touring Theatre on a production in 2019. In 2017 she was a Genesis Director at the Young Vic. She is an acting tutor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and Course Leader for a post 16 Professional Acting Diploma at Boomsatsuma.
Directing credits include:
Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama), When They Go Low (NT Connections/Sherman Theatre), Yellowman (Young Vic), Romeo and Juliet (GB Theatre), As You Like it (GB Theatre), Curried Goat and Fish Fingers (Bristol Old Vic), Dogtag (Theatre West), Strawberry & Chocolate (Tobacco Factory Theatres), Dutchman (Tobacco Factory Theatres) and Persistence of Memory (Rondo Theatre).
Yarit creates physical storytelling, she is an Ensemble Associate Artist of Shakespeare’s Globe, a certified stage combat teacher with the BASSC and Co-Founder of Intimacy Directors International UK. Theatre credits include: Death of A Salesman (Young Vic); Richard II, Hamlet, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing (all for Shakespeare’s Globe); Wild East (Young Vic), As You Like It (Shakespeare in the Squares); Little Voice (Park Theatre); Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Squares); Assata Taught Me, The Iphigenia Quartet, Dairy of A Madman ( all for The Gate); Disgraced (English Theatre Frankfurt); Dark Tourism (Park Theatre). Screen credits include: Intimacy Coordinator, Adult Material (Channel 4)
