LONDON — Inua Ellams’s plays have been such an enlivening presence on the London stage in recent years that it comes as a particular treat to make contact with the man himself.

“An Evening With an Immigrant,” a solo play written and performed by Ellams, a London-based Nigerian author, allows us 90 minutes in his compassionate and impassioned company as he chronicles the distance he has traveled both physically and psychically from his native West Africa, first to England and then Ireland and back to England, gathering acclaim as a poet, performer and playwright along the way.

The production by Ellams — author of the much-traveled “Barber Shop Chronicles” as well as an insightful take on “Three Sisters,” with Chekhov’s play relocated to Nigeria during the country’s Biafran war — shares a stage with monologues from Alan Bennett and David Hare at the Bridge Theater here. And while those English dramatists represent a long-established senior generation, Ellams and other fast-rising Black artists, several of whom are included in the Bridge repertory season, point to invigorating theatrical prospects ahead.

One of four children born into a Muslim-Christian household — he has three sisters, aptly enough, given his interest in Chekhov’s play — Ellams identifies as “naturally nomadic” and describes a continuing quest “to find people to tell stories to.” (So it flows naturally that the key props in his show are a notepad and a suitcase.)

Source: New York Times

Powered by NewsAPI.org