Photo: The Other Richard

This autobiographical piece is an account of Adrienne’s Kennedy’s coming to London, as a young divorcee on a Guggenheim scholarship, in the 1960s. While there she met a number of theatrical big names and came getting close to getting the script writer’s job for a dramatisation of John Lennon’s book In His Own Write. In the event, her work was used for a single performance and then she was dropped because by then Lennon had changed his mind and wanted to write it himself. Her young son Adam was with her during her time in England.

The 75 minute play which dates from 2008 but which has not been performed in the UK before, presents Adrienne (Rakie Ayola) decades later telling Adam, now adult, (Jack Benjamin) what exactly what happened in 1967. Effectively it’s a monologue because Benjamin, who sits facing her from a front corner of the Minerva Theatre’s thrust stage, merely feeds in very occasional one line questions and plays bursts of guitar music to stress the mood.

It’s very simply staged. The set consists of two dining chairs (design by Anisha Fields) which Ayola walks round and occasionally perches on. Behind her is a full-stage, panelled screen on to which images are occasionally projected (video design by Hayley Egan) such as some enthusiastically blooming flowers when she’s describing living at Primrose Hill. Fairly obviously, these short video interjections are, at least in part, a device to give Ayola a few seconds’ break and a chance to take a sip of water.

Ayola gets exactly the right tone for an older person reminiscing to a younger family member although we have to suspend disbelief to accept that she’s old enough to be Benjamin’s mother and to have been in her thirties in 1967. The repetition of “I’ll never forget it” is a nicely observed touch.  And she’s very funny when telling Adam about meeting Lawrence Oliver (“Heathcliff!”), talking to Kenneth Tynan and seeing Paul McCartney in the flesh and discovering that “he looked like Paul McCartney”. She conveys very well the dewy-eyed incredulity of a “girl from Cleveland” suddenly mixing in such exalted circles and gives us every detail of how it came about.

It’s an interesting story with a compelling central performance by a talented actor at its heart, but as a piece of drama it’s pretty static and a long way from the arrestingly gritty originality of Kennedy’s other work.

After the performance, and following an interval,  there’s a 20 minute film which includes some background footage about the events described in the play.

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  Photo (and right): The Other Richard

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First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/mom-how-did-you-meet-the-beatles/