Royal Lyceum Theatre
Four stars.
The strange fruit is already hanging when the curtain slowly rises on Zora Howard’s devastating play to reveal three black men lined up close like pretty maids in a row. With their hands tied behind their backs and their legs dangling above a tree trunk like plinth, the extended silence that accompanies the presence of this seemingly unconscious trio allows to sink in exactly what we are witnessing.
As the men come awake, the double edged sword of the play’s title becomes clear as Slim, Blood and Bird bicker, banter and sing the dirtiest blues before they contort in pain as invisible nooses tighten, and the same routine repeats ad nauseam.
The three men, of course, are the symbolic victims of assorted assaults on .black community down the ages. And in Howard’s own production for the New York based Flea Theater, they are sentenced to some Beckettian limbo as they are given voice inbetween the agony.
This is a powerful image on Neal Wilkinson’s black box design, with the three men bathed in Reza Behjat’s beatific lighting design. There is a musicality to Howard’s writing brought to life in near syncopated back and forth by Kamal Boldem as Slim, Bryce Foley as Blood and Julian Rozzell as Bird. Crucial to this is Megan Culley’s sound design, which alternates between the sounds of nature in the field the men are lined up before passing trains, and the strain of ropes bring hoisted on high.
Out of this, the men are invested with a dignity for the men as they become a living memorial to black experience across America past and present. The way the cast are lined up above the plinth makes one think at points of athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ iconic raised fist salute as they were awarded medals in the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. The triumph in Howard’s play comes in the survival of the voice of those murdered in a slow burning affair that exposes the continuation of racist violence even as it damns it.
Until Aug 23.
The Herald, August 22, 2026
Ends
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