Really good theatre can sometimes seem like a religious experience, but I've yet to see religion make good theatre. Kwame Dawes's musical play, or dubaretta as it is rather wittily called, is a celebration of Rastafarianism and spirituality. Too often it feels like Sunday school rather than theatre.
Inspired by Roger Mais's early-1950s novel Brotherman, Dawes relocates the story to 1970s Jamaica, where cobbler and healer Brotherman helps the sick and the poor, dreams of building a school to provide education for all and is given a hard time by the local police force and those who think that Rastas are wasters who just sit around smoking weed all day.
In between strong Christ-like motifs, the play interweaves the stories of several characters, all connected with Brotherman. These include his former lover Girlie, who left him for the corrupt Papacita who now beats her; Cordelia, who is driven mad by her sick baby and who eventually does the Judas on Brotherman; and Minnette, the young woman who loves him.
The show really gets moving and is at its most enjoyable in the musical numbers, but the story barely holds together and is sometimes quite confusing. The itsy-bitsiness of the script's short scenes is exacerbated by a set design that slides up and down, this way and that, in a most distracting manner. The script is not in good enough shape for production, and, although director Yvonne Brewster and her cast do their best to paper over the cracks, they can't hide the fact that the foundations of this show are pretty shaky.
It is also a curious mixture of social realism and mysticism. On one hand, it depicts a corrupt society where the police behave as they want, picking on Rastas and planting evidence. On the other, it depicts Brotherman less as a victim of these injustices than as a mystic martyr, who apparently dies and rises from the dead to preach peace and love.
He is not a guy to get excited about and not entirely sympathetic. "Jah give it and Jah take it away," is his laconic comment on Cordelia's infanticide and suicide. Towards the end the play descends into melodrama as the corpses pile up.
The singing is fantastic, Peter Straker as the greasy yet strangely attractive Papacita lights up the stage whenever he appears, and the show is big, bold and colourful. But the script needs a lot more work to cut the mustard.
• Until April 28. Box office: 0117-987 7877.
