Writer and performer Edi De Melo is an innovative force in Mulatto Boy as he masterfully guides his audience through themes of identity, immigration, and belonging utilising a powerful fusion of spoken word, Angolan proverbs, and physical theatre.

Huvi played by Edi de Melo (The Play That Goes Wrong) is a Black-mixed race man who has lived his whole life in London, embodying British sensibilities.

He is a die-hard Arsenal fan and has always played by the rules. He enjoys going to the club with his diverse group of friends and knows all the trending dances. He keeps calm and carries on, and sometimes even smiles in the face of covert racism at work. He FUCKING LOVES TEA and his White English girlfriend. Even when she doesn’t have the patience to understand his experience. But when he applies for his British passport so they can get married abroad, Huvi discovers he was never legally registered at birth— never really British.

Accompanied by his fateful Griot guide played by Tunji Lucas (The Bike Squad) who mulitroles as instrumentalist, friend, and enemy whilst Huvi struggles to navigate the bureaucratic maze to gain British citizenship. Mulatto Boy reflects on his life, wondering if it’s always been this way, and asks – what is it to be Black, Mixed Race and British?

Altering the Omnibus Theatre in the round, Mullato Boy introduces himself within a crimson circle as the referee of the story. A powerful and playful representation of duality who intends to challenge his audience to see things differently. In questioning established stories and exposing hidden truths, de Melo embodies the past, the present, and the spiritual other to provide a visceral account of a biracial-multicultural experience while exhibiting the complex bureaucratic struggles of immigration in Britain.

Practically a modern-day Shakespeare, Mulatto Boy is told with masterful cadence and philosophical musing entirely through spoken word — but is also bilingual, adapts to regional accents, and slang, and hits the Gwara Gwara. What a combo, don’t hurt ‘em de Melo…

Though De Melo is multirolling, and code-switching, his performance is incredibly honest at every turn as he lives through each character’s trauma, joy, and realizations. His endurance to continuously jump back and forth weaving through time and changing emotional realities is an impressive display (directed by Chris Yarnell) and a meaningful device in his storytelling. Creating the sense of resilience and perseverance required to survive the limbo state of systemic oppression that strips individuals of their foundations and affects their agency for generations.

The incredibly professional production design (by Georgie Lynch) of Mulatto Boy aids de Melo’s astute endeavors as it convincingly shifts between different scenes with minimal set pieces, but instead, includes musical interludes, voiceovers, and different lighting elements to establish scenes and alter the tone. Making it easy for an audience to follow dense verse, and stay immersed in and aware of the stakes.

Lighting design (by Harriet White) expertly radiates the theatre with warmth and nostalgia as Mulatto Boy describes the vibrant culture and landscape of his mother’s homeland in Angola. Then melt into cool, hazy blues, and pinks like ice cream in a child’s hand as Huvi two steps and sways with arms wrapped around himself, recounting the innocent delight of the night he met his partner for the first time on the dance floor of Peckham Levels. The suspense of a fast-paced scene between de Melo and Lucas swallowed in darkness, utilizing flashlights to sharpen the audience’s senses and highlight moments of terror was brilliantly executed and deeply impactful.

Shining a light on intersectional issues of power in Britain’s colonial culture and abroad, Mulatto Boy is an honest expression of the emotional impact and systemic effects that the boxes we check, the borders we trail, and the security we negotiate with those who misuse and abuse power have on the soul.

This production sets itself apart as both a poetic piece focused on an intimate story of identity and a socio-political work as it confronts discriminative immigration policy and anti-Black attitudes within British society. Historically, Black identities are often portrayed with a numbing focus on monolithic tropes that tend to limit characters to being caricatures rather than characters experiencing human conditions. Mulatto Boy successfully acknowledges the ways these tropes are both false and embodied but also takes seriously the implications of social categorization. Doing the work to articulate these issues so often deemed “complex” with ease serves as a beacon of hope for the future of theatre and social change.

Kennedy Jopson