Nicholle Cherrie (Roo) and Nathan Queeley-Dennis (Orion) in Black Love
(Picture: Camilla Greenwell)A lush, wraparound, jazz-funk keyboard soundtrack provides the spine for this chamber musical, a jubilant celebration of black affection and identity tempered by white interference. It’s a likeable, often joyful but ultimately lopsided show, part family story and part polemic. Writer-director Chinonyerem Odimba has been working on the book and lyrics for two years with composers Ben and Max Ringham, and a bit more time is needed before it fully zings.
Sister and brother Roo (Nicholle Cherrie) and Orion (Nathan Queeley-Dennis) are bound close by the memory of their parents’ passionate marriage, and the flat they were bequeathed. For them, black love involves “more than blood, more than just fam”. But a rift opens when actor Orion falls for white Lois (Beth Elliott) at a festival – she helps him look for Roo, who’s off her face on magic mushrooms - then takes on a role in a play that proves deeply compromising.
