Camden Theatre: The Hounding of David Oluwale

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The Review - THEATRE by ALAN LEDWARD
Published: 26 March 2009

Richard Pepple, Laura Power and Daniel Francis

Ill-fated journey in a ‘see nowt, say nowt’ culture

THE HOUNDING OF DAVID OLUWALE
Hackney Empire

THE recession-busting Northern cop corruption drama continues to boom – this has not been the greatest of public relations months for the alumni of the Yorkshire force.
Forty years on, the revisiting of the death of David Oluwale has the requisite grittiness of the genre. The play opens with the macabre recovery of Oluwale’s body from a Yorkshire river, set in pantomime nocturnal gloom. The frogman flippantly refers to the “coloured” victim.
It sets the tone of unrelenting bluntness as old-school racist slang pervades. Oluwale (Daniel Francis) is labelled “wog”, “sambo” and “monkey”.
His stage resurrection is employed as a theatrical device that allows Oluwale to play a part in the subsequent inquiry into his death by Scotland Yard internal investigator Perkins (Ryan Early), the crusader sent to permeate a “see nowt, say nowt” culture.
Oluwale’s decline is re-traced: his English-rose-tinted journey from Lagos, dreams of Cambridge University and “the green grass of the UK”, his arrest for disputed minor offences, being labelled an “undesirable” and enduring torturous shock treatment during eight years in a mental hospital.
As Leeds belatedly recovers from its war-time hangover, police are ordered to sweep the streets, and shop doorway domicile Oluwale is exposed to harrowing brutality. The city’s mayor wants a retail renaissance, a consumer “citadel” and Oluwale’s face doesn’t fit.
The portrayal of the natives initially threatens to be disappointingly one-dimensional as only the interloping Perkins from “Lundun” shows any compassion for Oluwale’s plight.
But the socioeconomic complexities entwined in Oluwale’s story later allow for more expansive character development.
Oluwale’s odyssey is profoundly tragic, at times comedic, and moving throughout.
Until March 28
020 8985 2424

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