King Hedley II review: Lenny Henry brings power to tragedy with weight and darkness

1/10
Henry Hitchings24 May 2019

Lenny Henry brings a muscular star power to this passionate, sprawling tragedy. Dating from 1999, it's one of the less well-known plays by August Wilson, theatre's great chronicler of African-American lives, and reviving it is another bold step for director Nadia Fall, who took the helm at this East London venue last year.

Henry has a flirtatious elegance and an air of half-suppressed menace as Elmore, an ageing con artist who loves to gamble. It's a performance of poise and authority. Yet the production's defining presence is impressive 25-year-old Londoner Aaron Pierre.

His character, King Hedley II, sounds like an obscure monarch. But in fact he's a dreamer living in a run-down part of Pittsburgh in the Eighties. After spending seven years in jail he would like to mend his ways, yet he can't help being drawn to shady ventures.

King longs to open a video shop and hopes to fund this by selling fridges, in partnership with his clownish friend Mister (the engaging Dexter Flanders). Meanwhile his mother, Martina Laird's earthy Ruby, is rekindling a romance with Elmore, who seems to be connected with the death of his father. King is haunted by his murky past, and Pierre captures his vulnerability and violent resentment.

As everyone around him obsessively dredges up old memories, dense monologues are the norm. The most bizarre of these come from King's neighbour, Leo Wringer's Stool Pigeon, who's uncomfortably fond of apocalyptic drivel.

But the play, despite its unwieldiness and some laboured symbolism, has real weight and darkness. The superb cast, which also includes Cherrelle Skeete as King's unhappy wife Tonya, ensures that Fall's vigorous yet sensitive interpretation achieves a gritty kind of grandeur.

Until June 15

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