★★★★☆
Four Stars
To judge by her sell-out popularity, the last few years have seen Kate Tempest take the spoken-word scene by storm. As a naturally mixed medium, reliant on a combination of the rhythms of music, the verbal ingenuity of poetry and the delivery of drama, it’s unsurprising that Hopelessly Devoted defies categorisation. The play swerves between realistic dialogue and abstract physicality, but its songs are the key structural feature. They not only function vitally in the plot, as inmate Chess (Amanda Wilkin) goes from wannabe artist to overnight music sensation through the prison workshops of music producer Silver (Martina Laird) and accidental Youtube exposure, but also serve as a chorus or commentary, tracking shifts in emotional focus.
Far-fetched though some of the leaps in the plotline may be, its words are full of truth. You know this from the moment when Chess’ cell-mate and lover Serena (Gbemisola Ikumelo) first furiously expresses how people looking at you in a certain way, expecting you to act in a certain way, only makes you feel more like acting in that way. This honest assessment informs Chess and Silver’s first encounter: Chess is buoyantly communicative among the inmates (to their affectionate annoyance), but needs to be drawn out of her naturally defensive shell before she’ll be anything other than sullenly uncooperative with Silver. From there it moves — convincingly slowly and painfully — to Chess’ first truly powerful performance, an outburst on the theme of being locked up that quickly reveals itself to be not about life inside jail, but out of it. Turning the theme on its head creates a reminder of how routine prison life may be preferable to the chaotic outside world: its solitude encourages both the nurturing of creativity that couldn’t blossom in a harsher environment and the cultivation of intensely loving relationships, as exemplified by Chess and Serena themselves.
Barring off-stage presences (Serena is a complete contrast to Chess’ previous abusive boyfriend, who was particularly violent towards her when she sang), the characters are all suspiciously loveable. Tempest’s treatment of such difficult and specific subject-matter can feel mildly inauthentic, but it’s seldom trite, and plenty rings true of humanity. There’s humour among the grit: “It makes me feel… stronger,” Chess says of the music workshop. “Wiser? More whole as a person?” Serena chimes in teasingly, intercepting and negating any sentimentality in a way perfectly in-tune with her character.
But Tempest isn’t as out of her element as you might think. Her understanding of what perennially makes people tick, whether now or thousands of years ago, is masterful. Here she’s drawing on the ancient association between music and freedom, and it’s a beat pulses through the play. The chords for the finale song hover hesitantly for nearly half the play, stopping and starting — not broodingly grim or desperately passionate like the music of the other songs, but tentatively hopeful, even happy. When they reach their fulfilment it’s exhilarating, because they become music as a source of strength, music as clarification of the fiery, directionless anger that would otherwise dominate, and music as a contribution — as giving something even when you’ve seemingly been drained of all you have to give.
