Tinuke Craig at the Old Vic
(Picture: Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures Ltd)There’s a scene in Jitney, the first work in August Wilson’s ten-play cycle detailing black life in Pittsburgh in each decade of the 20th century, that feels almost spookily contemporary. The lone female character, Rena, berates the protagonist Youngblood for stealing the grocery money she needs to feed their child: she can skimp on clothes, heating, electricity, but not food.
“Yeah, it feels real, doesn’t it?” nods the director Tinuke Craig when we meet to talk about her new production of the play coming up at the Old Vic. The action takes place in an all-male Pittsburg cab office in 1977, where drivers live from meagre fare to meagre fare and are being priced out of their own neighbourhood. Even though Craig was born in London in 1987 (five years after the play was first published), it’s a world she recognises.
