Trouble in Butetown review

Sarah Parish is Gwyneth, rough of tongue and generous of spirit, eking out a living from rented rooms in a “mixed house” and distilling gut-rot booze in the backyard. Her elder daughter, Connie (Rita Bernard-Shaw), has a talent for singing (stunningly displayed in original, period-style songs by Clement Ishmael), and longs to join up and entertain the troops. Little sister Georgie (on opening night, a glorious Rosie Ekenna) dreams of being a war hero, “like Dada”.

Gwyneth’s tenants are old salt Patsy (Ifan Huw Dafydd), Marcus Garvey-quoting Norman (Zephryn Taitte), and Dullah (Zaqi Ismail), who’s in a lusty relationship with Connie’s friend Peggy (Bethan Mary-James) and who’s as devoted to the pub as he is to the Qur’an. Upheaval comes to this intimate but precarious household when Nate (Samuel Adewunmi), a Black GI from Georgia fleeing the Snowdrops, takes refuge in Gwyneth’s back garden.

For Connie – chafing against a monochrome existence of domestic drudgery – Nate represents danger and romance, but his presence also forces a confrontation with agonising loss and cruel injustice. It cracks open familial fissures, and raises questions about the meaning of home and community: perhaps home is less about where you are, than who’s there beside you.

Peter McKintosh’s glowing design offsets an interior of cosy clutter with the steel hooks and chains of the docks, and if the writing is at times a little schematic, there’s a tangy sense of place here. And Atuona’s vivid characters are irresistible, in a drama that, at its best, has a piercing loveliness.