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Hot Brown Honey The Remix
2017, Edinburgh at the Roxy Assembly, the show is sold out. It is August at the Edfringe and the excitement is audible, the heat is palpable and the stage is set with the Hive, a giant neon honeycomb pulsating black and yellow. Busty Beatz - AKA Queen Bee sits atop the hive, like an elevated bloc party DJ with a stratospheric afro. That evening my frontal cortex was blown into an alternate universe, an explosion of being seen.
I was forever changed…’The Revolution Cannot Happen Without Childcare’ resonating through my colonised brain, along with,’ Don’t Touch My Hair.’ That night, the fierce, femme sisterhood of first nation performers was indelibly tattooed like dots upon my psyche.
Flash forward to 2023 Nottingham Playhouse and there has been much water under the bridge. Covid happened, many creative collectives and companies struggled and died during the pandemic Hot Brown Honey remains, survives staunchly defiant, asking more of theatrical venues, demanding to be seen, and heard. Demanding the right to take up those spaces. It’s seven o’clock, the forecourt of Nottingham Playhouse is buzzing with anticipatory eagerness, and then you enter the space. Three Hive collective performers dance on the stage to hip-hop and R n B empowerment tunes, whilst the other bees buzz around, dancing, interacting and taking selfies with the audience. This show is us, with us, with them, for them, for us.
The excitement is audible. The weather outside is decidedly British, and the stage is set with the Hive, a giant neon honeycomb, pulsating black, gold and yellow. Ofa Fotu - AKA The Myth Slayer sits atop the hive understudying for Busty Beatz. And so it begins. Lisa Fa’alafi - AKA The Game Changer, enters the stage to say g’day, addresses her audience and welcomes us to the hive. The hive glows and a flurry of lights, samples and ‘you get what you get and don't you get upset,’ reverberates. Busty Beatz shouts out, ‘Look who’s coming to dinner Motherlovers! ’ a beautiful nod to Sidney Poitier and a satirical slant that throws lovin’ shade on the intersectional feminist feast they’re about to serve up. The hive glows and nestled behind a glowing screen is a cacophony of feather sunflowers which emerge, a burlesque array of choreographed first nation honey bees, which go from Haka warriors to Busby Berkeley babes. They deftly eschew their honeycomb tracksuits, whilst those feather petals spin. They strip to Lizzo t-shirts, the music blares Bell Biv DeVoe’s ‘This Girl is Poison,’ and the trousers are lost. Then, with pure cabaret magic, their costumes change again into ‘those’ of french maids, while Busty Beatz shouts out ‘You Are Not a Maid!’
For those of you who are aware of the movie ‘The Help,’ a film Viola Davis regrets making as it amplifies the white saviour and not the authentic voice of Black women - this maid motif could not resonate louder. This poison routine flows into another stunning display of spot-lit, first nation femmes in traditional garb. Busty Beatz dons a feather headdress amplifying with her voice, ‘We Are Not Witches!’
Each scene slides fluidly into the next, and Lilikoi Kaos - AKA The WaveMaker enters as a va-cay blonde airhead, dressed in traditional Polynesian ‘costume’ - who mimics ill-thought-out cultural appropriation whilst being iconically raucous and unruly. She whips off her grass skirt, kicks off her slides, licks her pussy, sniffs it, hula hoops eight, sixteen, twenty-four (maybe more) hoops all thrown to her by her maid. She gives the middle finger (another recurring anarchic motif) flashes her tits and asks, ‘Who wants a mixed baby?’ - Divine in-yer face truths that some may find hard to swallow but others like me will ‘drink it up’ like the honey nectar of realness it is.
What follows is a symbiotic dance between, cabaret, drag, burlesque, circus, theatre, spectacle, performance art and activism, with beat-boxing, drag kings, and comedy-clowning. The slap-dick humour is mutinous overthrowing the patriarchy, sticking her finger in her pussy, pulling it out and saying fuck you to toxic masculinity, patriarchy, misogyny and misogynoir. They sing into dick-like microphones, beat out their vociferous vernacular on pussy power. Ofa, Mayu, Lilikoi and Yami batter the masculine power paradigm literally. Trump, Piers Morgan and King Charles III are hyper-inflated breast-beaten, bombarded and violated by the matriarch. It is the ritualised degradation of the female spirit flipped upside down - but in this case, no one gets hurt (discounting certain fragile egos.)
And so act after act captures existential feminist and racial political ideology; the womanly Polynesian - the dusky maiden, the noble savage whose beauty and culture are consumerized. The leaf costume is phenomenal in this extraordinary physical storytelling, morphing into the various versions and concluding with Matehaere Hope Haami Aka - Hope One, sliding beneath Lisa Fa’alafi’s legs with a leaf blower giving the whole scene a Beyoncé wind machine supermodel catwalk level up. So good, so, so good.
The whole thing is tied together with the spoken word and DJ stylings of Busty Beatz (tonight Ofa Fotu). There is no way to encompass all the raw beauty and power, of this physical, visceral, Aristotelian spectacle of burlesque philosophy, poetics and performance. Although let's be clear when we quote Aristotle, we must remember that he believed that women were doomed to be subservient to men because they are unable to control themselves physically and psychologically, the way men can. Well Aristotle you can suck on the Hot Brown Honeycomb because this was an exercise in physical and psychological control at its very best.
And so a moment to honour an aerial performance by Mayu Mutu - AKA the Gravity Defier for a piece that brought tears to my eyes, a winding and unwinding of suicide; physical, emotional bondage, made to look as though the air is solid. She made air tangible, easy to climb, with the gathering of the rope, the intertwining of hope, despair and the restriction and mutilation of female bodies. She made it effortless. Breathtaking.
From the get-go to the glow stick batons to the tight choreo to the myriad of messages that underpin the entirety of the production and ensemble, this is for the ‘women who are silent.’ They are ‘rocking the boat’ with honey and sting.
We Absolutely Need this Collective in the cultural, creative and theatrical landscape. Unapologetically resistant, part diva, part goddess, part warrior. It is about time we all become aligned with the HBH Hivemind - Decolonise and Moisturise! The Revolution has arrived.
Written by Eljai Morais Other highlights, the signature, ‘Don’t Touch My Hair,’ of course ICONIC. Alinta Mcgrady - AKA Badass Mother in her fishtail glitter Supremes style dress pulling nappies from her bra and ‘literally’ mothering on stage - does this speak to female mother creatives? Hell yeah! In 2025, the UK will finally receive 30 hours of free childcare per week. Damn right the revolution cannot happen without childcare. There is no equality without it. I can vouch for that, first-hand as a female creative and mother.
‘Repetition is Key’ (Matehaere Hope Haami. ) That right there! That beat-boxing smorgasbord of percussion in spotlight, mic mouth beats, outstanding. Coconut Aunties rocked, so funny! And let's talk about the ensemble. I loved each and everyone, Yami Rowdy Lovenberg AKA - The Trailblazer hitting it so hard in the drag king ensemble act, I couldn’t get enough of that, and the ‘What is Privilege?’ scene - which theatricalises an ‘actual’ privileged personified race from a famous You-tube video. Take a step forward if...? Powerful!
Richard III
Adjoa Andoh - Photogragraphy Shonay Shote
Phoebe Shepherd & Adjoa Andoh - Photography Shonay Shote
Adjoa Andoh & Daniel Hawksford - Photography Manuel Harlan
Adjoa Andoh & Daniel Hawksford - Photography Shonay Shote
Adjoa Andoh & Joseph Kloska - Photography Manuel Harlan
‘What happens when the person who is punched down upon, punches up?’
I'm a lover of Shakespeare, I have been ever since I first picked up the complete works aged twelve with its Bible-like papers and read Macbeth, another well-known Shakespearean villain. Richard III though is cast against a murky history, written down as the Black Prince and Adjoa Andoh's iteration sets him as such, a Black would-be king set against a white rural canvas.
The canvas is anything but white, the Rose Theatre stage shows a crop of wintered trees above huge, brown, vast, sometime diaphanous canvas screens which silhouette, murder, marriage, and all the intrigues. The set design by Amelia Jane Hankin is an impressive backdrop, which accentuates the many layers of the text and whispered subtext.
A huge central tree was a symbol of Kingship and the roots that filter down into history (Lancaster and Plantagenet) and historical misplacement, much like many black people in the UK the branches are ancestral diasporic untethered roots, and Richard untethered by his misplacement is made sociopathic.
If we have no power, how do we find it and wield it?
The first half is mirthful, comedic even, Richard's machiavellian asides bring laughter, palpable laughter from the audience as Adjoa gleefully gambols her way through courtly and religious affairs, whilst weaving villainy all the while. The opening scene is light and spirited, uplifted by the soundtrack and the folklore which is ribboned against the Maypole Tree, and Richard's opening soliloquy is sprightly, smiling and mischievous which in turn makes his deeds resonate more sharply against the canvas, as we laugh with Richard, We become complicit in his Blackness.
The musical score by Yeofi Andoh is stunning, I wish there had been more of that, the musical scene with Clarence's son, soon to be king is eerily incandescent, the songs bring soul, depth and rural aural tradition, and this is Adjoa's background rural England in the 1960s. As someone who grew up in a rural backdrop in the 1970s, hearing these voices, the lilting tones of the countryside brought back all the memories of growing up in an environment not always welcoming to black faces.
Adjoa was the only black actor on a vast stage among a cast of what seemed like twelve white actors, realising a dream. What happens when you are judged by something you cannot change about yourself? So that blackness is an analogy for disability, Richard as the villain because of his Blackness, and if we look at Blackness as an analogy for foul deeds, as a Black community we are only too aware of the criminalisation of Black men especially, prejudice and negative inference based only upon the colour of the skin. So Richard decides to play to his stereotype, if he is viewed as a villain, then he will prove to be one. Richard is almost modern in his self-marketing, but there is also something unhinged, something off, and his mental health begins to deteriorate as he becomes more and more desperate to gain power. Richard is one of Shakespeare's most adept gaslighters but like all of his tragic heroes it is his undoing, as his lies and treachery begin to unravel so does his mind.
So highlights, Adjoa of course, she commands the stage, she fills it with her powerful tones, her arched eyebrow as she looks to the audience, her boyish roguishness, there's a village jack-the-lad about her which is strangely charming and she shines especially with the scenes with the older female characters, Margaret, Elizabeth and the Duchess of York, played brilliantly by Liz Kettle, Rachel Sanders and Caroline Parker. What comes across is the ignored warnings by all the older women, they all know what Richard is but were not listened to by the patriarchy, often mocked, manipulated and blamed, but whose words of foreboding of course are prophetic, they were the invisible women. Male power vs female instinct. The scene where all three women stand illuminated in front of three great trees in ACT V is so powerful.
Buckingham played by Joseph Klaska was a brilliant spin doctor for all of Richard's manipulations and plans, and Richmond's (Daniel Hawksford) speech of tyranny in Act V where he addresses the people was filled with warmth and true Kingly power; for in the end it is the people who are unfooled and unduped, by Richard's shroud of honour, familial love and duty. The ghost scene where both Richmond and Richard are visited creates a supernatural flurry, a feast for the senses with phantasmagorical music, sound and lighting, before Richard's final soliloquy.
There was something so lonely in those last scenes where, Richard as the forsaken Black man at the base of the tree rooted in the George Cross and all that is White and English, his displacement is real - there was never a place for him - the Black prince at the seat of Kings. For many people of colour, the george cross carries heavy connotations of racism, a reminder of Englishness not afforded even to those born in this country to first generation migrants.
As a side note, I enjoyed the use of incense in the religious scenes, the scent pervaded the theatre and added to the sensory experience.
Finally, what was wonderful to see was a Black presence at the Rose Theatre, for many it was the first time they had seen Shakespeare, one woman made the point of saying, 'It was wonderful I understood every word!'
I praise Adjoa for challenging our ideas on Shakespeare, code-switching the dialect, the setting and the intent, and provoking a conversation about new narratives for the bard. This is a banquet for the eyes, ears and mind, a must-see for anyone looking for a new reading of a classic tale of ambition and familial intrigue.
Richard III runs from April 26th - May 13th at the Rose Theatre.