(photo credit: Jeremy Mimnagh)
In Between Everything
by Jason Booker
A new play by a new performer. What to expect? Is it a version of their life or total fiction? Will it be brilliant or disastrous? Will one side of the performer-writer be stronger than the other? Or will it be all about finding a balance, living in between?
Obaaberima by Tawiah M’Carthy is one of those plays that strives to be in between everything.
Agyeman, born in Ghana and on the eve of his release from a Canadian prison, introduces himself, orange prison jumpsuit half-on, half-off, posing at extreme angles and staring defiantly at audience members. The play transitions to tell how he got there from an eight-year-old self slipping into his mother’s dress and high heels while left at home alone to now, following him through the schoolyard bullying he encounters, the local tailor who rescues him from a beating and encourages the young Agyeman to be true to himself. Punctiliously dropping in on the character every few years as he develops, Agyeman gradually meets other men, falls in love and moves to Canada to train as a lawyer.
