Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . . .
Watching The Search Party last night at Lincoln Center’s Clark Studio Theater, I thought to myself: this is why we go to the Under the Radar Festival. Indeed, this is why we go to the theater—period.
Inua Ellams, author and performer of this captivating, hour-long solo piece, is a Nigerian-born, naturalized British poet and playwright. (You may remember Barbershop Chronicle, his exhilarating play at the Public Theater in 2019). I learned more about Ellams in an hour than I know about many of my friends.
Ellams disarms us from the moment he enters the intimate 130-seat theater. He sits on a comfortable sofa, surrounded by books, and engages us immediately: “I communicate best with people who don’t belong,” he explains, referring to his immigrant identity. He then takes us into his confidence, telling a story of how he recently left his iPhone in an Uber and the random circumstances under which he retrieved it. We identify immediately, and from then on we’re bonded.
Next, Ellams invites us to join him in a collaborative, conversational, improvised hour together. Spontaneous, yes, and yet artfully designed. Holding an iPad in his hand, he outlines the evening’s format. He’ll invite three members of the audience each to offer a word—one that he’ll search for in the huge body of his work (essays, plays, poems) stored on his iPad. He will read from that work, and then move on to the next audience member’s offering of a word.
This ritual repeated itself three times in the performance I attended. The first word, “Uber,” didn’t yield much (since it means “over” in German). But the next two unearthed goldmines in his oeuvre. The second word, “vagabond,” led him to his eloquent essay about immigrants and refugees—a group with which he passionately identifies. He read an excerpt about a boat of refugees from Africa trying to land in Europe, many of whom died. The third word, “Hollywood,” led him to read from an essay he wrote about James Baldwin, a writer whom he greatly admires, as do we all.
Ellams then invited questions from the audience. I dared to ask one—about his recent adaptation, in 2019 at the National Theatre in London, of Chekhov’s The Three Sisters. Though he set it in Biafra during wartime Nigeria, Ellams remained admirably faithful to Chekhov’s original plot and characters. What inspired him to write it? I asked. With a disarming smile, he answered honestly that he couldn’t say no to the invitation from that prestigious British theater (and its implicit remuneration).
I left the theater filled with admiration for this gifted writer. He enchanted us and, at the same time, earned our complete trust. He elicited our compassion and deepened our understanding of what it means to be an immigrant (Ellams explained how he fled Nigeria for the UK, then was expelled, then reentered again to fight for his citizenship). He moved us as a compassionate human being with his unsolicited, spontaneous remarks about his partner who has been suffering from cancer and prolonged treatment. He impressed us with his talent as a performer, with his genuine love of theater, and his unique gift of bonding with an audience.
Not since the monologist Spalding Gray have I been so spellbound and so moved by a solo theatrical encounter with a gifted, profound writer. Inua Ellams clutched that iPad—filled with his brilliant, prodigious writing—as if it were his very soul.
The Search Party. Through January 13 as part of the Under The Radar Festival at the Clark Studio Theater, Lincoln Center (West 64th Street, between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues). www.lincolncenter.org
Photos: Lawrence Sumulong
