The narrative seeks to teach some of us the BSL alphabet in a melodic rap, which has the clearly stated intention to educate, but slows the story down and gives Deaf audience members little to do. Fonseca leavens the darker moments with comedy, which gives this show a surprising warmth and joyousness. There are visits to the hospital, lessons with a passive aggressive speech therapist (Ahuja plays her dressed in a clown’s wig), and an operation for a cochlear implant accompanied by a great storm of sound combined with elongated silences so that it almost feels immersive. Fonseca contends with multiple prejudices, taking to the school playground where bullies taunt him for being both Black and Deaf, even as his teachers deny his lived experience of racism. It takes us into the intersections around Black male identity in a way that is rarely explored on stage, at least in front of a mixed Deaf and hearing audience. The music, composed by Yacoub Didi and ranging from house to hip-hop and beat-boxing – is simply storming and the dance comes in expressive choreography from Fonseca. Photograph: Phoebe CapewellĪs a production, the story is signed and spoken, with captions on a back screen. That he loved dance music rendered him even more of an aberration, desperate to meet a like-minded soul – which he does in Raphi (Raphaella Julien), his “G”, whose story of being a Deaf mixed heritage female is signed by her and spoken by DJ Gaia Ahuja.Ī like-minded soul … Raphaella Julien as Raphi. As a young boy, he “felt like the universe was against me”. “Once upon a time there was a boy from down the road / He contracted meningitis at the age of two years old,” begins Chris Fonseca, its writer who signs and dances his early life story with a guileless charm, while co-writer, Harry Jardine, lends his voice as the narrator (he also directs and performs).īeing a young Black Deaf man, he is marooned in a hostile hearing world in which even his BSL interpreters look nothing like him (his words are most often spoken by white women, he says). It is a beguilingly upbeat start to a story that has great trauma at its centre. The music is blasting at top volume and performers moving to its electronic beat before this exuberant hour of gig theatre has even begun.
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