Nancy Medina gets off to a flying start with her first production as artistic director of Bristol Old Vic. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy, first staged at the Royal Court in 2012, is a plea for inclusiveness, an attack on othering. It is also – what could be more pertinent in this city? – a call for a new look at entrenched views of history. It slides across the stage fuelled by song: spirituals and gospel are given voice by five marvellous unaccompanied singers.
McCraney, the American playwright most celebrated for the Oscar-winning film Moonlight, imagines an exclusive boarding school for African American boys, in which a gifted youth is taunted by another – because he is queer. The bullying pains the hero but does not muffle him. Terique Jarrett gives a beautifully calibrated performance: quick-tongued, teasing, floridly expressive, with apparently elastic limbs.
