Theatre review: House of Ife

After her tenure running the Bush got interrupted soon after she took over, Lynette Linton continues to put her stamp on the venue by directing House of Ife, Beru Tessema's drama about three Ethiopian-British siblings and the family tensions that come to a head when their brother dies. Twins Ife and Aida (Karla-Simone Spence) moved to England when they were just about old enough to remember something of living in Ethiopia; Tsion (Yohanna Ephrem) and Yosi (Michael Workeye) were both born in London. The three siblings we meet are combative but pretty well-adjusted, but around the age of 16 Ife went off the rails in ways we gradually find out more about; the play opens after his funeral, as they try to celebrate their brother's memory while their mother Meron (Sarah Priddy) tackles the competitive mourning of the ladies from church in the next room.

Their father hasn't turned up in time for the funeral; the plan was for the family to eventually return to Ethiopia, so some years earlier Solomon (Jude Akuwudike) moved back to Addis Ababa to build a new house for them.

He did build it - and his wife and children have been sending him cash to help with the project for years - but he also bigamously married a much younger second wife, and quickly had another four children with her. When Solomon finally arrives (thanks to a plane ticket Tsion had to pay for) he's full of evangelical fervour with grand talk of the church he's building and the victims of war he's going to help; he fails to see why his eldest children would feel like he's replaced them.

For a play without a huge amount of plot, and mainly a study of the way different members of the family deal with the secrets that come to the surface after trauma, the hour and 45 minutes go by surprisingly quickly. Although the atmosphere stays intense throughout there are a couple of comic moments to break the tension. But predominantly it's the energy of the characters and the cast bringing them to life that makes the play stay so watchable. A study in grief is a hard sell at the best of times, let alone after the last couple of years, but this is one I'm glad I caught.

The story is of course building to a big family confrontation, and threads like Solomon's eternally ongoing but worryingly vague construction project, or his children not being able to read the Ethiopian language, are nicely set up to come together in the end. If there's a weakness in the writing it's that this big climax is a bit too overloaded with revelations, and relies on various family members having some pretty major gaps in their knowledge of their closest relations. On the other hand the way Tessema weaves in one revelation about Ife is very nicely subtle, to the point of being there for the audience to spot if they choose to. It's given life in Linton's well-acted production, with Spence a particular standout as Aida, an artist on the brink of success who's been unable to paint anything other than her twin since his death.

House of Ife by Beru Tessema is booking until the 11th of June at the Bush Theatre's Holloway space.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.