Strange Fruit
Bush Theatre London

FOLLOWING a superb revival of Winsome Pinnock’s Leave Taking last summer, the Bush Theatre continue their Passing the Baton initiative by staging this debut work by Kittitian-British writer Caryl Phillips.

Now better known as a novelist, Phillips was just 21 when Strange Fruit was first produced at the Sheffield Crucible in 1979. For someone of such youth it is a flawed yet remarkable work, as is Nancy Medina’s current production.

As you enter the theatre through the beaded doorway, you encounter Max Johns’s design incorporating all the classic features of a traditional West Indian sitting room  — a ceramic pineapple, a stack of records, a portrait of the queen.