Theatre Review: Ghost Boy
Article published: Wednesday, March 10th 2010
For 17-year-old, MC-ing drug dealer Jamal, life on the Lemonade Estate is tough; nowhere near as sweet as it sounds. Keith Saha’s Ghost Boy, now showing at Contact Theatre, sets a tale of knife crime and weed-fuelled paranoia to a beatboxed, hip hop score. Innovative lyrics and dance punctuate a script which attempts to balance the darker issues of contemporary society with Shameless style comedy.
Dubstar, a.k.a. Jamal (Tachia Newall), is the arrogant hard boy of the estate and haunted by Ghost Boy, a local teenager who has been stabbed to death. Meanwhile, Dennis (Everal A. Walsh), another resident of the estate, is disillusioned with the level of crime around him. He decides to take the law into his own hands by dressing up as Flyman, a superhero responsible for clamping down on youth crime. The two characters repeatedly clash and eventually form an unlikely bond which unravels a secret that has serious consequences for both of them.
This is not piece of conventional theatre. For the audience there is no sitting back comfortably in the shadows: the house lights come up regularly for crowd participation and at times it feels more like a gig than a play. Dubstep, soul, reggage, and rap, among many other styles of music and dance, feature highly. However, it is the beatboxer, Hobbit, who steals the show. He not only provides the backing track to Jamal and Dennis’s musical numbers but also provides every sound affect. From doors slamming shut and pencils sketching to spliffs being sparked up and burnt down, every noise that comes out of the microphone is eerily believable.
Hobbit, with his cellist accompanist, is a permanent fixture on the stage. With the assistance of an eight-track to loop and layer their sound, the musical effects are pieced together in front of the audience; something which consistently proves more interesting than the scenes being acted out along side. There are both funny and gritty moments but, at over two and a half hours long, Ghost Boy is in need of an editor.
As the play drags on, all the punch brought to the stage by the beat boxing, puppetry and rapped lyrics is unfortunately lost in a succession of over-deliberated and over-explained scenes. The play is far too focused on the developing relationship between Jamal and Dennis to keep the momentum going. Despite the musical variety show put on for them, there are simply not enough characters or dimensions to the plot to keep the audience engaged throughout.
Lula Boardman
Ghost Boy is at Contact Theatre at 8pm every night until Saturday 13 March
More: Culture, Manchester, Stage
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