Joe Penhall’s award-winning play Blue/Orange radically rethought at Oxford Playhouse

Blue/Orange at the Oxford Playhouse, from Tuesday, November 16, to Saturday, November 20

Review by JON LEWIS

Twenty-one years on from its debut at the National Theatre, Joe Penhall’s award-winning play Blue/Orange has been radically rethought in a scintillating new production by James Dacre for the Royal & Derngate Theatres, Northampton.

The play concerns the case of a young black man, Christopher (Michael Balogun), an in-patient waiting for his 28-day enforced stay in hospital to end. His equally youthful doctor Bruce (Ralph Davis) battles his supervisor and senior consultant at the hospital, Robert (Giles Terera, superb), over Christopher’s treatment.

Dacre’s key innovation is changing the ethnicity of Robert from white to black. Robert’s decisions emphasise that differences of medical approaches in treating young black men with mental health problems may be less about financial targets or the exact diagnosis of the mental health problem suffered by Christopher, and more about cultural representation. Robert is intensely ambitious, seeking out a professorship in a field where there are few black professionals. Without changing Penhall’s lines, Robert now suggests that he too has faced discrimination and his denigration of Bruce has its justifications.

Michael Balogun, who two years ago was touring in the small-scale production The Dark at the North Wall, has developed into a star of British theatre. His role in The Death of England: Delroy at the National Theatre raised his profile, and here, he is mesmerising as Christopher. A resident of White City, Christopher feels persecuted by neighbours and the police, and rails against his confinement, lack of girlfriend, and the institutional racism he exposes in the medical profession. His condition causes him to see oranges as blue – a metaphor for seeing things differently. His belief that his father is, one day Idi Amin, the next Muhammad Ali, a sign he identifies with powerful black Muslim men, although it’s also clear he’s unwell. Robert believes the hospital environment is making Christopher ill, not this disorder.

With an icy soundtrack composed by the Icelander, Valgeir Sigurdsson, and played out on Simon Kenny’s sterile set with bright, white neon strip lights, this is a powerful discourse on discrimination, power imbalance and care issues. An excellent revival.