Some of the shine has come off Moonlight, the Oscar-winning 2016 film adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unproduced play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. At the Royal Court this year, Danny Lee Wynter’s Black Superhero featured a monologue decrying it as a humourless misrepresentation of Black queer life – “a dirge underscored by an oboe”.
No such charges could be levelled at McCraney’s Choir Boy, itself a Royal Court premiere from 2012. The show is now the beneficiary of a revival by Nancy Medina, artistic director at the Bristol Old Vic. At its core are a cappella gospel hymns and spirituals that unite sparring classmates at the elite (and fictional) Charles R Drew prep school, showing how harmony can persist even amid discord.
Harsh reality occasionally trespasses on the music, whether during a discussion of the value of song to enslaved people, or in the opening scene where choir leader Pharus (Terique Jarrett) is distracted from his performance by a homophobic insult. He refuses to snitch on his heckler: that’s not what a “true Drew” would do, he insists, his allegiance to tradition overruling queerness in the internal melee of his identity.
The play is structured as a string of sketches punctuated by debates and confrontations that reveal the group’s dynamic: the swagger of bullyboy Bobby (Alistair Nwachukwu) is laced with grief; Pharus is exasperated by the obstacles placed in front of him; dapper AJ (Jyuddah Jaymes) and aspiring pastor David (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay) are harbouring their own secrets; and Junior (Khalid Daley) scurries between them all like a puppy. The rapport between the young actors is unforced and infectious.
Though individually absorbing, the scenes don’t achieve the cumulative force that might be expected, and a last-minute flurry of plot points suggests that McCraney is racing to the finish line. None of that is the fault of Medina, whose staging is fluid and expressive, especially in a brace of vignettes during which the back of the school hall set rises to reveal the stark white tiles of the PE showers. Hers is a stirring production of an imperfect play, in which everyone gets his chance to shine.
At Bristol Old Vic until 11 November.
