The Clinic starts off with a satirical set piece as a Black middle-class family meets over a birthday dinner in their airy kitchen. Nigerian-born, Tory-voting parents lock heads with the children: a police officer son, his Labour MP wife, and a junior doctor daughter. The culture wars erupt as they fight about politics, policing and race; they could be the affluent family from Zadie Smith’s On Beauty being teasingly sent up.
Dipo Baruwa-Etti’s early dialogue shimmers with quick wit, intelligence and delightful touches (Happy Birthday is sung with harmonies, gospel-style). Siblings Ore (Gloria Obianyo) and Bayo (Simon Manyonda) throw daggered salvoes at each other, the former out to expose her metropolitan family’s hypocrisies, while the parents, Tiwa (Donna Berlin) and Segun (Maynard Eziashi), emanate smugly earned privilege.
