Stage-to-screen review: Out West

Another show where I opted for the streaming option rather than a lengthy Undergound journey each way, Out West comes from the Lyric Hammersmith, a venue with a history of work that often takes very specific inspiration from its West London location. Co-directed by Diane Page and the venue's artistic director Rachel O’Riordan, these three specially-commissioned monologues from big-name playwrights all have some kind of connection to Hammersmith or the surrounding areas of London, beginning with a historical one: At the end of the 19th century Mohandas Gandhi (Esh Alladi) lived in Hammersmith for three years while studying for the Bar. In Tanika Gupta's The Overseas Student we follow the teenage Gandhi from the ship taking him from India to London, to the ship taking him back three years later. It may well be the same ship, and the treatment he receives is certainly the same, but in the intervening time Gupta subtly suggests the development from awkward young man embarrassed when confronted by women and made to feel guilty for his vegetarianism, to a future world-changing figure.

Fascinating on one level as a piece of history, The Overseas Student is also enjoyable for the way Gupta and Alladi avoid overstating this Gandhi origin story. We're gently led through his development as he becomes increasingly politicised and aware of how much the English exceptionalism he's admired all his life is built on the oppression of his own country. At the same time his determination not to do harm - symbolised throughout by his vegetarianism, which almost leaves him starving in a country with few meat-free meals - is undimmed, and we're left to put together the pieces about how this all gelled into the figure as he's remembered by history.

The next two pieces bring us much more up to date, with both taking place about a year ago, but history is still a theme in Simon Stephens' Blue Water and Cold and Fresh, as Tom Mothersdale's Jack is both a history teacher, and delving into personal history when he takes the opportunity of the first lockdown being relaxed to walk from Greenwich to Hammersmith, to visit the five homes his recently-deceased father lived in throughout his life. The monologue is directed to his father, whom he hadn't seen for some time despite knowing the end was near. Memories of both good and bad times with his father are interspersed with him talking about his wife and new son, and the way the added tensions they face as an interracial family have roots in people like his father. Mothersdale is as ever an appealing stage presence, and really draws you into a narrative that at times I found contradictory, holding the extent of the father's racism back a bit too much until the end.

Roy Williams closes off the evening with another of the formidable but instantly likeable Black mothers he's so good at writing: In Go, Girl Donna (Ayesha Antoine) is 30 with a 14-year-old daughter, and hers is a story that flips constantly from triumph to disappointment and vice versa: As a teenage mother she got her moment to shine when she got to sing for Michelle Obama, a glory she feels was stolen from her by one of her fellow students; at a Zoom school reunion she lets rip, venting her disappointments about how her life turned out. She's now a security guard at Westfield, and as her daughter reaches her teens she's paranoid about her not turning out the same way she did - but furious when the girl herself puts it in those terms. When they witness a potentially very nasty situation, Donna finds out exactly what her daughter is capable of, and the evening's shortest piece is the wittiest, but also a heartwarming look at Black female strength, and the way perspective can define whether you see your life as a success or not.

Although bookable at specific times, the online version is a previously-recorded performance of the plays rather than a live stream. It's a pretty slick production all things told, and I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but there seems to be a bit of variety in the filming styles between the plays - a bit more dreamlike for Gupta's, harsher for Stephens'. This fits into the way the directors use Soutra Gilmour's stark design of an unpainted wooden step-like structure in different ways for each piece - Mothersdale barely acknowledges it, Antoine occasionally steps up and down it, and Alladi explores it like Gandhi exploring Victorian London. All three pieces tap into a very specific theme of how the last year has made us look at issues of race and this country's colonial past, but in ways that make for a very varied and entertaining evening.

Out West: The Overseas Student by Tanika Gupta, Blue Water and Cold and Fresh by Simon Stephens with collaboration by Emmanuella Cole, and Go, Girl by Roy Williams, is booking until the 24th of July at the Lyric Hammersmith; and streaming until the 17th of July.

Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes.

Photo credit: Helen Maybanks.