This is soul-soaring theatre, charged with a sense of ritual and legacy that give it an elemental power: exhilarating.
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Joseph's text, lyrical, pulsing, woven with tunes and multi-roling, blends the past and present, the spiritual and the instant.
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Yasmin Joseph’s debut play, a beautifully rendered love letter to Notting Hill Carnival, is a kinetic, strikingly confident piece of work that also happens to be the most “live” that live theatre has felt since its return.
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It's all but impossible not to feel the sheer joy in performance imparted by Gabrielle Brooks and Sapphire Joy, playing Londoners who have converged in 2017 on the Notting Hill festivities at the j'ouvert of the title, i.e. the official start of Carnival.
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Mostly, though, it’s a tremendously enjoyable, raucous evening from a four-strong female cast with two gutsy, energetic central performances.
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Where does the carnival atmosphere come from then? It’s to be found, in part, in the vivacious interplay between two young women who are unashamed about their desire to let their bodies talk for them.
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There are potentially interesting arguments about class, cultural appropriation and Gen-Z activism to be found in the clashes between the friends, but they could have been further developed.
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Joseph’s writing captures the heat and colour of carnival, but also provides a more layered look at its history and political significance.
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