The Canary and the Crow
Arcola Theatre, London

THE CANARY and the Crow kicks off with an explosion of heavy hip hop and a challenge from actor Nigel Taylor to clap, stamp, wave our arms and chant.  We love it and are undeterred, even when the chanting changes to the rugby favourite “oggy, oggy, oggy.”

It’s unsettling, though, to hear black music accommodate this white man’s chorus. What does it mean? That’s the point of the play, in which The Bird is a deprived black boy who finds himself winning a scholarship to a high-achieving school.

His single mother is ecstatic, while the boy is mystified. He's about to discover that being black and different in a community of patrician boys is a ceaseless struggle. “I see things differently from you,” he says to a largely white young audience. “There is nothing you can tell me about being black.”