How do you change the world? That’s the question at the heart of Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s new play. He and his young protagonist are hardly the first to ask it. As the play itself makes clear, 16-year-old Toye – a talented pianist and gifted student – is the latest in a long line of people who have tried to make their mark. But what stops this from becoming a glib meditation on a well-worn subject is its ability to capture the messy complexities of activism, social change and personal ambition.
When we first meet him, Toye (Samuel Tracy) is utterly focused on his immediate goal: winning a music scholarship to a private school. But while revising, he starts to notice the absence of his own history and culture in the curriculum. As a corrective, he starts a lunchtime club to teach Black British history to his classmates, supported by best friends Remi (Princess Khumalo) and Asha (Sara Hazemi). Initially, it seems like this might be a simple story of awakening and inspiration. But Half-Empty Glasses is more complicated than that.
As so often happens, Toye soon finds himself hemmed in by structures far bigger than he is. Remi and Asha, meanwhile, favour different tactics. Head girl Remi urges a more patient and incremental approach; Asha wants to widen their focus to bring in other marginalised figures, including those from her own Middle Eastern background. For Toye, the self-appointed and increasingly stubborn leader, it’s confrontational protest or nothing. Baruwa-Etti has the skill of making all these perspectives equally compelling without the play ever feeling like a contrived debate. As performed by the strong cast of three, each of the viewpoints on offer comes across as real and deeply rooted in character.
In Kaleya Baxe’s simple but focused production for Paines Plough’s Roundabout space, Rory Beaton’s lighting is the star. When Toye plays piano or reads about Black history, the space explodes with colour, showing the different hues that art, knowledge and empowerment can bring to human experience. This, the staging seems to suggest, is what’s at stake: the right to a world full of colour and light.
At Roundabout @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
