Over the years I've come to trust Indhu Rubasingham's judgement, which is the only reason I would book for a play whose blurb compares it to
Waiting for Godot - especially so soon after putting myself through
some actual Beckett again. Antoinette Nwandu's play about the ongoing epidemic of black Americans being shot by police turns the pair of tramps into homeless African-Americans living under a railway bridge, their inability to move from the spot not down to abstract existential dread but the very specific knowledge that anyone who tries to get away gets gunned down. Paapa Essiedu plays Moses, whose name, like the play's title
Pass Over, references the other overt influence on Nwandu's play, the biblical book of
Exodus, and while Moses himself often despairs, his friend Kitch (Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) has faith that he can lead his people to a Promised Land.
