Wolves on Road at the Bush Theatre: a sparky play about generational differences in London’s immigrant communities

Hassan Najib in Wolves On Road at the Bush - (Helen Murray)

A young, British-Ethiopian hustler on a Bow housing estate finds out the harsh truth about cryptocurrency in Beru Tessema’s lively play, which proves that nothing dates faster than something specific and topical.

Beneath its headline-fed fascination with tokens and blockchain, this is a study of generational differences in first-and second-generation immigrant communities, of post-pandemic youth in pursuit of a fast buck online, and of impermanence.

A surprising second act shows how scams, ponzi schemes and established financial frameworks always worst affect the worst-off, but also suggests how virtual trading and transfer platforms might be socially beneficial.

Despite the vigour of Daniel Bailey’s production for the Bush and Tamasha Theatre, the narrative twists seem forced, the five characters’ relationships awkward. Though I was engaged throughout, I didn’t entirely buy it.

We first see 21-year-old Manny (effortlessly charismatic Kieran Taylor-Ford) flogging shonky designer accessories on Instagram in 2021 – his second, doomed get-rich scheme after a mobile barbershop. In debt and possibly in danger he embraces his friend Abdul’s promise of riches from online crypto trading. “Manny” is short for Emmanuelle, by the way, but also sounds handily like “money”.

His white father is absent, and his Ethiopian mother Fevan, a wannabe restaurateur, is dating Markos, a bus and Uber driver desperate to get his son Dawit out of Africa. The older generation dream of building a home and a business; the younger want a sublet Canary Wharf penthouse and a leased Lamborghini.

Kieran Taylor-Ford, left, and Hassan Najib in Wolves On Road (Helen Murray)

There’s interesting grist in here too. Food is a straightforward metaphor for connection to one’s culture, while language is divisive. Manny resents Markos referring to him as “son”, while Markos considers the younger man’s polyglot slang a mark of disrespect: both men, of course, depend on long-suffering Fevan’s tolerance.

We see the real-time video chats of Manny and Abdul, and the rollercoaster graphs of their crypto fortunes, projected live on the panels of Amelia Jane Hankin’s functional set – a symbol of how easily we get addicted to our screens.

The boisterous, goading friendship between Taylor-Ford’s Manny and Hassan Najib’s swaggering Abdul is more convincing than any of the other relationships on stage, though Alma Eno and Ery Nzaramba wring moments of humour and pathos from Fevan and Markos. Jamael ‘Hamilton’ Westman takes the role of crypto-evangelist Devlin (before ceding it mid-run to Tom Moutchi) and works the audience like a showman; but even he seems not entirely certain of his tone.

Tessema’s first produced play, House of Ife, also at the Bush, was a close family drama also set among the Ethiopian diaspora in Britain. Its plot was wayward while its characters and their melting-pot London argot felt blisteringly authentic.

Here, Tessema has clearly set out to understand the arcane world of cryptocurrency and you can feel his research sitting in the play like silt, weighing down his sparky dialogue.

Bush Theatre, to December 21; bushtheatre.co.uk