Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Sep 15 – Oct 21, 2023
Playwright: Aleshea Harris
Directors: Zindzi Okenyo, Shari Sebbens
Cast: Henrietta Enyonam Amevor, Clare Chihambakwe, Kevin Copeland, Masego Pitso, Cessalee Stovall, Darius Williams, Patrick Williams, Grant Young
Images by Pia Johnson
Theatre review
Racine and Anaia are heavily scarred, by cruel and neglectful parents who seem to know nothing about nurturing or caring for their children. Left to their own devices, the twin sisters can only understand the world as violent and savage, as we watch them embark on an odyssey of murder, in Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is. A revenge fantasy filled with wild imagination and scintillating humour, the play is both terrifying and hilarious, in its portrayals of wayward youth, unhinged femininity and recalcitrant Blackness. The United States have never looked so subversive.
Directed by Zindzi Okenyo and Shari Sebbens, Is God Is delivers delicious humour, keeping us on the edges of our seats with unpredictable characters, who prove to be truly and thoroughly intriguing. There is nothing normal about Racine and Anaia’s lives, and seeing things through their eyes, means a completely fascinating, and dangerous, experience.
Costumes by Renée Mulder conjure imagery of ruined innocence, offering a childlike perspective, but one in a state of decay, as a constant reminder of the story’s despairing centre. Mulder’s set design involves a protean structure evoking notions of home, establishing for the production a whimsical style that draws parallels with the much more wholesome fare of juvenile television programming. Lights by Jenny Hector help manufacture drama, but is somewhat lacking when required to convey a sense of macabre during key moments of repugnance, for this occasion of genre theatre. Sounds and music are effectively rendered, by Joe Paradise Lui, to ensure that we navigate the varying tones of the production, as it slips and slides ever so subtly between comedy and horror.
Henrietta Enyonam Amevor and Masego Pitso play Anaia and Racine respectively, both actors vivacious and charismatic, able to blend naivety with brutality, for their confronting depictions of civilisation in disarray. The troubling pair’s mother is performed by Cessalee Stovall, who guides us to the truthful core of Is God Is, without sparing us the necessary discomfort of having to acknowledge the pain in that truth. Also remarkable is Darius Williams, who as the grandiose poet Scotch, gives us some of the biggest laughs, in a fabulous acerbic take on youthful and misguided masculinity. It is a marvellous cast, with each individual leaving an excellent impression with the complexities they introduce, along with the sheer entertainment they manufacture, for this very dark tale.
It only makes sense, that the most audacious fantasies should come from the most marginalised. Young, Black women are routinely underestimated, diminished and shunned. Being the very antithesis and embodiment of that which is pale, male, stale and therefore most highly valued, their perspective from a position diametrically opposite to the hegemony, is what will reveal the most of our ills. Is God Is may not choose to engage directly or explicitly with all our social issues, but just to have art of this nature materialise, is an indication of our capacity to shift, and a reminder that culture is always malleable.
Suzy Goes See 