…CAKE – THEATRE PECKHAM, LONDON

A review of …cake, a new play by babirye bukilwa on now at Theatre Peckham. This is a play that wears its intersectional heart on its sleeve, but initial strengths shine less brightly in a more charged second half.

…cake – Posing Challenging Questions

…cake is a play unlike others that I have seen recently on the London stage. It is a domestic psychological drama like The Death of a Black Man. It deals with the legacy of trauma like Death of England: Delroy. Yet babirye bukilwa is a playwright with such an unapologetic voice and point of view that …cake is very much its own entity.

This staging at Theatre Peckham is the world premiere performance of …cake, part of a trilogy of works by bukilwa. Their earlier play, …blackbird hour, was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2020; and shortlisted for the Bruntwood Prize 2019, and the Alfred Fagon Award 2020 (which we learned about here). It takes us into the past of …blackbird hour’s main character Eshe, and explores her relationship with her mother Sissy. …cake asks us whether intergenerational cycles of trauma can be broken; and whether queer Black femmes can find love in a hostile environment. These are big questions to confront in 90 minutes.

A Queer Black Story, And A Mother/Daughter Story

The action in …cake is quite simple. It opens with Sissy, alone in a run down and noisy apartment. She drinks wine, smokes a blunt and dances to Sade. Her 16 year old daughter Eshe arrives – Eshe hasn’t been around in a while and the tension is immediate. The 90 minutes of …cake play out in real time as Sissy veers between anger and joy, and Eshe is torn between wanting to leave and wanting desperately to be what her mother needs.

For me, this dynamic felt very authentic. …cake asks us what happens when, after years of an ‘us against the world’ parent/child relationship, the child grows up. What happens when she wants to forge her own path but finds her mother’s happiness – or even identity – depends on her? The play is rooted in these questions as a specifically queer, Black story, but this type of intergenerational trauma has the potential to resonate much more widely.

How this theme develops is interesting. At the start of the play, the dialogue is quick, rapid-fire. Both characters have a wall up, and are not letting the audience in any more than each other. I actually quite enjoyed this – it can be tiring listening to unrealistic speeches and soliloquising on stage. As the play progresses, however, it does on occasion veer into dialogue which, taken out of context, would sound somewhat less authentic. This keeps pace with the ratcheting tension as Sissy and Eshe act out their trauma, but I missed the realness of the opening scenes.

Final Thoughts on …cake

I felt privileged to see this play, led by an all Black and majority queer creative team, and representing voices that are not always given space in theatre programming. Danielle Kassarate as Sissy and Donna Banya as Eshe deliver strong individual performances; we feel their characters’ struggles.

One thought that I had was whether this is a part of a trilogy which functions best in that context. Some of the lighting and sound design which confused me initially made more sense once I had read more about …blackbird hour. A key part of this work is foreshadowing what is to come. Without an understanding of that context, I felt …cake had some gaps as a stand-alone work.

This does not stop it being a confronting and refreshingly different piece of theatre, however. Performances are on until 7 August so in particular SE London locals like myself should check it out and support Theatre Peckham, babirye bukilwa and the whole …cake team.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

…cake on until 7 August 2021

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