Ryan Shorthouse reviews Random at the Royal Court, London 

Pre-show wine down their necks, the Sloanes in the Royal Court are having a great time at the beginning of Random, giggling at infamous gestures and sayings of members of a stereotypical Black family. Swaggering into school, the teenage boy holds the top of his trousers and taunts the teacher, mimicking one of the rap stars plastered on his wall. His poe-faced sister is a typically bitchy teenager; fast talking, Brixton’s answer to Vicky Pollard. Inarticulate dad is lazy, leaving his wife- an earthy, eloquent mother with the world on her shoulders- to do all the housework.

This play is an urgent alarm to the middle-classes, sheltered in enclaves around London, that they unwittingly generalise the relationship between the black community and violent crime. We are seeing them as all the same, perhaps why this is a one-person play, all parts acted by an amazingly talented Nadine Marshall.

Playwright Debbie Tucker Green cleverly uses all the props that form the same old narrative about black youths: disengaged or absent father leaves cocky teenager to gangs and eventually guns. However, just as the stereotypes are in place for the story to be re-enacted on stage, Tucker Green smacks us around the face, and wakes us up to the fact that its not always the same experience for black people. When the police show up at the family’s home about a shooting, the audience are left assuming that the culprit is the wayward son. Not so. He is actually the victim, randomly shot on his way home from school. We are reminded too that this is not an everyday circumstance for black families, symbolised by the dropping of the episodic reminder of time that dominates the first part of the script. For most of them, like the rest of us, the daily routine is going to school, doing a mediocre job, worrying about the length of your daughter’s mini-skirt, and preparing food for a family with a healthy appetite. Not dodging bullets.

But this is not just serious social commentary; it’s incredibly entertaining. Affluent Londoners interested in current affairs are not the only ones sat in the auditorium; the audience is varied, with many black people, all laughing at the amazing way Marshall changes her voice and physicality for each character. And the stereotypes Tucker Green has conjured are also a recipe for a good chuckle. Twinning the mood of a grumpy teenager and the tongue of the street, the funniest line by far comes when the daughter gets out of bed, moaning about “birds bitching their birdsong outside”.

The familiar and funny stereotypes make it easier for the audience to connect and empathise with characters that many would not associate with in real life. But when the boy dies, here was a chance- now the audience’s attention has been captured- to show the unimaginable grief faced by the family. Instead, we get the steely determination of the family to carry on living their lives, too proud and bitter to listen to the commiserations of neighbours. An outpouring of grief may well have shown another dimension to Marshall’s incredible acting, and accentuated the message of the enormous shock that black families face when confronted with random acts of violence, rather than something they must simply persevere on a daily basis.

Apart from this little disappointment, Random is a breathtaking performance and illustrates that the present narrative that is prevalent in the public realm- that the majority of black families either contribute or are victims of violent crime on a regular basis- needs to be questioned.