Safe Space
Jamie Bogyo
Directed by Roy Alexander Weise MBE
Minerva Theatre, Chichester
Star rating: 3
Jamie Bogyo’s first stage play, is a sassy and perceptive exploration of the vexed debate about the “cancelling” of historic slavery enthusiasts. Based on real events at Harvard in 2016, Safe Space takes us to Calhoun College which, following student protests, was renamed Grace Hopper College in 2017 because John C Calhoun didn’t just own slaves but was a vociferous advocate of the slavery system. We meet five students, all of them fictitious, and follow the changing dynamic between them as events unfurl.
Khadija Raza’s effective set provides a big downstage open space dominated by a statue of Calhoun, which slides on and off and eventually gets vandalised. Behind it is a mini platform which moves in and out to forms a student dorm, a panelled corridor and a wealthy student’s bedroom.
Connor (played by the playwright) and Isaiah (Ernest Kingsley Jnr) are room-sharing best friends – until they disagree about the renaming of the college and a fellow student named Annabelle (Céline Buckens) comes between them. Then there’s the ruthlessly determined Stacey (Bola Akeju) and Omar (Ivan Oyik) both holding influential, elected positions within the student body so they have political power. Getting the college renamed is top of their priority list, although they have very different personal agendas. All five actors play well off each other and we get moments of humour along with the serious stuff neatly packed into fairly tight drama. Director Roy Alexander Weise ensures that the pacey dialogue packs maximum power because of course there are complicating sexual elements to the way these students relate each other.
There is a second dimension in this play in that – like many Ivy Leaf and other US universities and colleges – Calhoun has an accomplished collegiate a cappella choir. The singing is beautiful: Bogyo and Kingsley are both outstanding singers. We hear student songs, folk songs, popular melodies and hymns. Now, the whole a capella movement is, in its many American manifestations, a very interesting subject and a play about that would be welcome. Unfortunately, it adds little to this one because it has little to do with the subject at hand and feels like a self-indulgent bolt on.
