A PATCH OF BLUE
KING’S HEAD

DESPITE its title, the colour that defines Alexa Asjes’ play is black – black skin, black hearts and the blackness born of being blind.
Selina is a young woman cruelly scarred and blinded in a childhood accident. Kept, literally and figuratively, in the dark by an abusive mother, Rose-Ann, she remains almost wholly unconnected to the wider world until a chance meeting with Gordon, a kind man appalled to learn of her wretched condition. Gordon, however, is black, a problem given the pair are living in the racially divided American south of the 1960s. Poor white trash Selina’s inbred distrust and loathing of the ‘niggers’ she has heard about but never seen is as strong as that of her family and neighbours. Her physical blindness parallels the prejudice of a society that neither sees nor wants to see the injustice of racial bigotry. The central characters have much in common, however.
Middle-class, educated Gordon is at the mercy of a prescriptive social system that refuses him opportunity.
Selina is the victim of a more parochial, domestic bigotry that denies her even the knowledge that opportunities might exist.
Their situation, then, does not make for a comfortable love story. The play is based on a 1961 novel by Elizabeth Kata and on a movie adaptation starring Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. Alexa Asjes’ play is strong in establishing rounded characters and the agonising dilemmas they face.
Its cinematic roots are always showing, though; the play’s quick-cut short scenes necessitate the division of the King’s Head’s pocket-sized stage into three separate sets, which is distracting and has the effect of disrupting the rhythm of the action.
Structural awkwardness aside, however, A Patch of Blue packs a powerful emotional punch, through both its visceral, meaty subject matter and the strength of its cast.
The central quartet, Eugene Washington as Gordon, Elizabeth Elvin as Rose-Ann, Paul Moriaty as the alcoholic grandfather and the writer, Alexa Asjes as Selina, are excellent.
Asjes, in particular, produces an affecting performance that never slides into the gloopy sentimentality that might have subsumed a play about the underdog’s struggle for dignity and understanding.
A bracing but inconclusive ending ensures that, despite the warmth of its many humorous interludes, A Patch of Blue resists falling lazily into the ‘feelgood’ camp, and is better for it.

020 7226 1916
Until May 15