Theatre review: Obama-ology

You got an ology? You're a scientist!

I don't know if it's very good or very bad timing that Aurin Squire's play Obama-ology makes its UK debut just as Obama's presidency looks likely to end on a whimper; probably the former, as the frustrating difficulty of making real change is one of the major themes of a story that takes place during his first presidential election campaign. Warren (Edward Dede) is a black, gay, Buddhist university graduate who joins the campaign's New York headquarters but is quickly shipped off to a strategically important, but difficult voting ward: East Cleveland could be a major part of winning the crucial Ohio vote. An almost exclusively poor black neighbourhood, it ought to be an easy sell, but many residents aren't registered to vote at all, and those that are still view Obama with suspicion, as a white man in black man's clothing.