Fifty years on, For Colored Girls still hits. Ntozake Shange’s 1976 choreopoem arrives at the Yard Theatre with all the love, rage, grief, humour and sisterhood that made it a landmark — and thematically, not nearly as dated as you’d expect.
Upon arrival, the first thing you’ll notice is that there’s nothing on stage. No elaborate set or props to hide behind. Instead, director Diane Page has the women watch one another from the edges, gather, separate and occasionally become silhouettes against the light. When one woman speaks, the others are there to witness her, responding with hums and snaps of assent and giving the individual poems a sense of continuity and collective experience.
It’s a smart choice, particularly given that some previous productions have allowed the individual poems to feel disconnected: a series of turns, not a cohesive work. The 2022 Broadway revival, for example, was praised for its exuberance but also criticised for throwing in so much spectacle and movement that the text occasionally got lost.
Shange coined the term ‘choreopoem’ for this thrilling collision of poetry, music and movement. Her longtime collaborator Dianne McIntyre described the process as responding to the energy and meaning of Shange’s words: everybody thinking in motion, with the boundaries between dancer, actor and singer deliberately blurred.
There are moments at the Yard’s first UK revival in when the movement feels a little too conscious of itself as choreography rather than an instinctive response to the words. But when it clicks, it really clicks. Music (by Jammz), colourful lighting and bold, patterned costumes infuse the stage with a kind of euphoric, almost celebratory energy, although it can still feel too stark at times, putting a lot of pressure on the performers to fill the space themselves.
These fix performers take on Shange’s seven Ladies: Tatenda Matsvai plays Green and Yellow; Nadine Higgin is Blue; Cherrelle Skeete is Red; Alex Thomas-Smith is Purple and Orange; and Ibilola Rossi is Brown. (Ryan Calais-Cameron’s recent West End hit For Black Boys… was crafted as a Black British male companion piece).
Rossi is captivating, especially in the poem ‘toussaint’, where she gives Lady in Brown a distinctive coolness and control. ‘positive’ is another highlight — it brings the women together, moving from playfulness into something darker and more complex. Then comes ‘a nite with beau willie brown’ which is devastating, with Skeete’s Lady in Red — who also plays Beau Willie — bringing a rawness to the violence that is as beautiful as it is hard to watch.
It’s these moments of beauty and joy that stop the production from becoming defined by trauma. Violent, visceral and stylish, For Colored Girls is still a necessary piece of theatre.
