Last Friday night Stuart and I went to see blue-collar blues play Skeleton Crew at the Donmar Warehouse in Londons glitzy West End.
It is Detroit in 2008 where the car industry is facing a downturn and rumours fly around about lay offs and redundancies.
Written in 2016, Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew sees four characters come together in Ultz’s locker lined break room. And they ain’t happy.
Faye (Pamela Nomvete) has 29 years continuous employment but 30 years will bring a considerable increase in her pension. Faye is the union rep and knows everyone because she has been there such a long time.
Shanita (Racheal Ofori) is in her 20s and pregnant with her first child and needs the security of her job and her maternity leave.
Dez (Branden Cook) is young, ambitious and has plans for his own business eventually dealing in car parts.
Reggie (Tobi Bamtefa) wears a tie and is a supervisor. He is the son of Faye’s best friend and owes the start in this factory to her introduction. Tobi has been given the undisclosed information about the future of the factory jobs.
The threat of redundancy hangs heavy on them all. Perhaps a little too heavy at times.
Skeleton Crew covers very similar ground and has a similar theme to Lynne Nottage’s award winning play Sweat albeit with very different outcomes.
The piece was nicely played but to be honest it took way too long to get going. And I’m not really sure I cared too much about the characters.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
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