Tremendous blues and gospel voices buoy up this oddball musical, which maps a fairytale of sisterhood onto the brutal realities of the racist American south in 1964. Adapted from the 2001 bestseller by Sue Monk Kidd, and first staged in New York in 2019, the show doesn’t seem to obey any rules, with songs blooming randomly as the story shape-shifts between genres and moods.
A collaboration between award-winning author Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined), left-field composer Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, American Psycho) and veteran lyricist Susan Birkenhead was always going to be strange. The resulting work, given a stylised production by cutting-edge US director Whitney White that heightens both the violence and the sentiment, is simultaneously riveting and sporadically baffling.
We open in Sylvan, South Carolina, where redneck dad T-Ray mentally and physically tortures his teenage daughter Lily (waifish Eleanor Worthington-Cox), encouraging her belief that she killed her mother and making her kneel on uncooked grits when disobedient. Lily’s only friend in the whole darn world is black servant Rosaleen (wiry, feisty Abiona Omonua), who is beaten by white men the very day President Lyndon Johnson outlaws all racial discrimination with the Civil Rights Act.
For very tenuous reasons, the two gals decide to high-tail it to nearby Tiburon. Here they are absorbed into a honey-making commune of black women built around a black Madonna statue supposedly found in a river by slaves. The queen bee is steadfast August (Rachel John), her wingwomen June and May. “What about April and July,” quips silly Lily. “April was my TWIN,” says Danielle Fiamanya’s stony-faced May. “SHE DIED.” Which cues up another mystery to be gruesomely unpicked.
Lily, a symbol of whiteness and emergent sexuality so obvious she would embarrass Walt Disney, draws down much unwitting harm on the black people she loves. Not just Rosaleen but also Zachary (impressive newcomer Noah Thomas), a young wannabe lawyer with whom she shares a duet freighted with innuendo. Rosaleen angrily sings that not everything is about Lily, but really it is.
There’s stuff in here about America’s attitude to guns, sexuality and commerce, as well as clunky cultural nods to Jane Eyre and James Baldwin. The show’s ultimate, hazy message seems to be that community (like the bees have) and love, faith and voting rights (like they don’t) offer a better future. Maybe.
Perhaps it’s foolish to impose clear meaning on a show that thrives on clash and contrast. In White’s production melodrama and heart-clutching sentiment butt up against rough reality. Worthington-Cox dutifully acts the fragile ingenue but has a powerful, emotive voice.
Omonua and John heave chunks of feeling from deep within themselves. But the stirring numbers in the score sit alongside a silly rock ‘n’ roll song by Zachary about his car, and a confection of lolloping rhymes from a suitor proposing to June for the 24th time.
Frankly, any show that addresses racism and the legacy of slavery is welcome right now, when so many voices seek to deny or downplay both issues. The Secret Life of Bees embraces many troubling tropes, mixes them all up in a musical bran tub, and – I think – synthesises something new. See for yourself: you certainly won’t be bored.
Almeida Theatre, to May 27; almeida.co.uk
