The performances are all good but Delroy Lindo's inspirational, sympathetic old visionary and healer and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's haunted Herald Loomis stand out as mesmerising. David Lan's intelligent production will make you think about the damage done by those years' of uprooting and slavery to the psyche of the African American.
Lynn Nottage's play Ruined about the Congolese women who are caught up in the warfare is a not to be missed theatrical experience. It is both disturbing and violent as we learn about their existence. The word harrowing is overused but Lynn Nottage's play describes the inhumanity towards the families and bystanders in a war zone.
The all Afro-American production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof comes to London with most of the roles re-cast with Black British actors, except for James Earl Jones as Big Daddy and Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama who continue their roles from New York. Sanaa Lathan is the exception, an American, but who didn't take on the role of Maggie in New York. All of the British actors are experienced stage performers and I have the feeling that this can only strengthen the London version of the play.