Right play, wrong place: The Fellowship, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

Roy Williams’s new play is a wonky beast. It has two dense and cumbersome storylines that aren’t properly developed. Dawn is a mother grieving for her eldest son who was murdered by a gang of white boys. Her younger lad is dating a white girl who used to hang out with the killers. It’s a heavy start. But Williams doesn’t explore this web of bereavement and forbidden romance and turns instead to Dawn’s sister, Marcia, a barrister, who is dating a white MP. ‘Giles is one reshuffle away from being a cabinet minister.’ Dawn claims that all white people are die-hard racists who pine for the old days when the N-word was in regular use. She pours scorn on Marcia’s blossoming affair with Giles. ‘Some horny married pale-skin who ain’t getting it at home has got himself a taste of jungle fever.’ Marcia appears to endorse her sister’s racism and she complains that her illicit affair was exposed by a female solicitor whose name she can’t recall. ‘Jessica? Jacqueline? Janet? They all look the same with their legally blonde hair.’ And yet Marcia is less bigoted than her sister. She tries to persuade Dawn, and Dawn’s racist husband, Tony, that white people are not blinded by hatred of their black neighbours.

The readiness of this affluent black family to parade their prejudices is likely to shock white audiences but Williams is an honest and sophisticated playwright who knows that his task is to reveal the truth in all its distressing ugliness. Dawn’s hatred of whites is complicated by admiration. She has a crush on John Travolta and she loves dancing to Take That. In the second half she delivers a fabulous speech confessing her contempt for Maya Angelou, ‘so boring’, and her preference for the Daily Mail. ‘I agree with every word Piers Morgan says about Meghan Markle… and I want to execute the next black person that goes on Masterchef and cooks jerk chicken.’