Deep Azure Review – The Musical Marvels in a Hip-Hop Tragedy by Chadwick Boseman | stage

CHardwick Boseman was not only an accomplished actor and Marvel superhero before his untimely death in 2020. Perhaps best known as T’Challa in Black Panther, he was also a writer — and this 2005 play holds all the lost promise of his talents.

It’s an ambitious, sprawling, music-filled story of a black woman named Azure (Selena Jones) who mourns her fiancé, Deb (Jaeden Elia), who was killed by a police officer. It is inspired by the 2000 death of university student Prince Jones, and links the theme of police violence in the United States to a Shakespearean plot of jealousy, injustice, revenge and grief.

The last of these is explored through a powerful portrait of Azure’s eating disorder along with the reactions of friends Deep Tone (Elijah Cook) and Roshad (Justice Ritchie). Jones is astonishing in the intensity of her performance, in her character’s anguish, and in the lapses of her action.

The play is a rich blend of hip-hop, song and poetry, and is also Shakespearean in its lyricism. It was partly inspired by Shakespeare’s poetry and features excerpts from his writings (such as the “So hard flesh” soliloquy from Hamlet). The central story about avenging (or otherwise) the unjust death of a loved one follows the story of Hamlet itself.

Details around Depp’s death are initially vague, and Boseman’s experimental narrative feels deliberately vague, as he jumps from contemporary America to Tsarist Russia, Rasputin and the enactment of a caterpillar cocoon that turns into a butterfly. There are also satirical musical pieces about television culture (eg Jerry Springer) and consumerism by the chorus.

This band, managed by Tristan Finn-Edwino, has a lively presence as they beatbox, rap, sing and dance, though they are another mystery of the piece, initially dressed in space-age costumes, later transformed into band members for a fictional university that Depp attends. Whether human or not, as required, they become parts of a car or cooing pigeons.

There are times when the narrative becomes too vague to follow, and the various threads seem disparate and scattered. The play has some shocking twists and is quicker, smoother and less confusing in the second half, when its puzzling parts come together.

It’s complicated in its non-naturalism, but that’s not a bad thing. The play is full of ideas, and there is a resigned pleasure in submitting to its strange logic and poetic richness.