Some of the shine has come off Moonlight, the Oscar-winning 2016 film adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s unproduced play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. At the Royal Court this year, Danny Lee Wynter’s Black Superhero featured a monologue decrying it as a humourless misrepresentation of Black queer life – “a dirge underscored by an oboe”.
No such charges could be levelled at McCraney’s Choir Boy, itself a Royal Court premiere from 2012. The show is now the beneficiary of a revival by Nancy Medina, artistic director at the Bristol Old Vic. At its core are a cappella gospel hymns and spirituals that unite sparring classmates at the elite (and fictional) Charles R Drew prep school, showing how harmony can persist even amid discord.
