Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Music may be the food of love, but it sure as heck causes a lot of arguments. It’s with one of those arguments that Dan McCabe’s effervescent 2019 New York comedy The Purists opens: a (mock) heated debate between passionate music-lovers, conducted on the front stoop of an apartment block in Queens. Facing off are forty-something Black hip-hop devotees Lamont (Sule Rimi), a one-time legendary rapper, and Mr Bugz (Richard Pepple), a successful DJ going through hard times. They can’t agree about Eminem. They’re soon joined by Gerry (Jasper Britton), a white aficionado of musicals in his sixties who lives in the same block and whose opinion of hip-hop is low to say the least. Into the fray come Val, a vivid little Puerto Rican woman (Tiffany Gray) who dreams of being a rapper but who is currently delivering drugs (including to Gerry); and Nancy (Emma Kingston), a young white woman who works for Gerry and has written a feminist hip-hop musical about pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart. Would that be a creative evolution of the art form or appropriation? And can Lamont step away from the macho orthodoxy of hip-hop culture to embrace the truth of Mr Bugz’s sexuality?There’s one actual rap battle in the show, between Val and Nancy, but in essence the whole piece comprises a series of battles — about race, gender and sexuality. And coursing through it is the fact that these individuals have more in common than they realise. The men are lonely, troubled, care deeply about their art form (and are blinkered and nostalgic about it) and everyone is struggling and dreaming of better times. McCabe draws out those connections and his play lands now as a warm antidote to the vicious, adversarial nature of so much public discourse.It’s snappily written and rich in ideas, buzzing with spiky, sizzling dialogue, but held back by being rather baggily constructed. McCabe scoops up a great many plot-threads and issues — Mr Bugz’s distress over his mother’s dementia, for instance — without having time to invest deeply in them. There are some terrific, truthful scenes — including an intense encounter between Gerry and Bugz that is beautifully executed by Pepple and Britton, but overall it feels as though it needs a string or two tightening. The performances are uniformly good, however, with Rimi, Pepple and Britton all drawing out the deep vulnerability and loss that lurk beneath their characters’ larger-than-life personas, and Gray and Kingston vividly expressing the women’s frustrated hopes and ambitions. Amit Sharma’s production, on Tom Piper’s skeletal apartment set, bubbles with energy and good humour. It ends with a fist bump. Which feels about right for this flawed but very enjoyable play.★★★☆☆To December 21, kilntheatre.com
