Colour. It plays a big part in our lives. But what if your skin colour means you don’t seem to fit in anywhere at all?
In Tones, Gerel Falconer’s fast-paced Hip-Hop opera, Jerome (also played by Falconer) grows up in a happy Jamaican family in a council flat in North London. Jerome hangs out with his cousin Joe, and Falconer gives us the first of his many, very funny, re-enactments of scenes from his life when the two of them watch Blind Date and discuss it as only schoolboys would. Jerome’s uncle overhears him describing how he would big himself up and become someone else in order to impress a girl, and warns him that he should never pretend to be something he isn’t.
And that comment sets the theme for the rest of the show.
Jerome is black, but he’s not very black. When he wants to fit in with the white children at his primary school, he’s not white enough. When he wants to fit in with black boys at his tough comprehensive, he’s not black enough. Where is his place?
Falconer wears a black mask over his one half of his face throughout, an ingenious way of conveying his situation. His only other props are a tin of paint, a small stepladder, a bottle of white spirit and a table; each one is designed to tell us something. Can you paint over yourself as Jerome paints over his childish wallpaper? Can you climb the social strata? And even if you can, do you actually want to?
Jerome is smart; he’s doing well at primary school. There he makes friends with a boy called Henry who comes from a very different background, and although they get on well, this is where Jerome’s problems really start. Even at the age of five he can see the contrast between his own home and Henry’s. There’s a telling story about playing Power Rangers at Henry’s party. To those who weren’t there, colour is all in this TV series, and Jerome is swiftly ordered to be Black Power Ranger – until a blacker boy comes along. Then guess which colour he’s demoted to?
Yellow.
He wants to fit in. So he invents a life. He’s still friends with Henry, but determined not to let him find out the truth – which of course, in the end, he does. And he’s fine with it; it’s Jerome who isn’t.
As time goes by, Jerome finds himself increasingly alone. He’s alienated Joe; Henry’s gone to a smart private school. Back at the comprehensive, Jerome is mocked for his ‘white voice’ – the voice he’s developed to fit in with Henry
‘Of course I’m black, I’m Jamaican/It’s just a question of pronunciation.’
So Jerome decides he needs to find a new persona. Jerome 2.0 (Joe: ‘You sound like a drink.’) He learns Jamaican patois from Joe, assumes the title of ‘Professor’, and he starts to rap. He’s good at that too. But even at a rap battle in an abandoned high rise (beautifully evoked – ‘a room in which a hundred spliffs are being smoked’) he’s told he doesn’t fit in; he ‘can’t come from Harlesden’ because he sounds too posh. As Joe says
‘You’re book smart but you’re not good smart.’
Every so often Jerome’s uncle reappears in his life to give him good advice, though like all teenagers he refuses to take it. Instead he keeps on trying to reinvent himself, but even when he gets into the same university as Henry, he can’t fit in. He’s a black man in a very white city. Things go from bad to worse. Henry’s surrounded by posh friends, and when Jerome accuses one of them of appropriating black culture, he gets the same accusation thrown back in his face. Who’s appropriating whom?
Gerel Falconer is a master storyteller. Never missing a beat, he raps his way through an hour that passes so quickly we’re shocked when it ends. His stamina alone is impressive; it’s a very physical performance. His imitations of the various characters who flit in and out of his life, from his enraged Mum to Henry’s posh Dad, are totally convincing and very entertaining. The occasional use of voiceovers works well.
And then there’s the music; I’m no expert in Hip-Hop, Grime or Drill, but it all fits perfectly with Jerome’s story; it takes you there.
But Tones is described as a Hip-Hop opera, and opera it is. Combining two art forms that initially seem to sit at polar opposites is some achievement. Tones makes us laugh, it makes us feel, it makes us think. It takes a theme that affects every one of us and infuses that theme with drama and humanity.
Tones, directed by Jonny Kelly, is a Wound Up Theatre production. It’s at Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs), 60 Pleasance at 3pm every day until 28 August.
