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Review: Tambo & Bones (Stratford East)

Review by Dan Sinclair


⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


Dave Harris’s play Tambo & Bones is one that is always followed by the words: controversial, shocking, provocative. But strangely, this is mainly from the journalism and coverage that follows it. After a rave run at Stratford East back in 2023, it comes back as a stop on its National tour. With an award-winning script from Philly writer Dave Harris and endlessly playful direction from Matthew Xia, it is an absolute smash. To condense the entire review to one sentence: it demands to be watched.


The red curtain rises on a minstrel show, with set and costumes that could’ve been ripped straight out of Disney’s Songs Of The South, with cheery whistling, jaunty top hats, and the sun beaming down, smiley face and all. On skips Tambo, he just wants a nap under a tree, and Bones, joining him, wants your quarters - and your time. The two offer themselves to the audience, blood and flesh, before realising that they are in fact, two Black actors at Stratford East, playing white actors in a black and white minstrel show. Quarters to dollars, dollars to a live hip hop set. From dollars to dreams to a vision of an American civil war. It’s a satire of the highest order, and within minutes, a breath of fresh air to the often dusty London theatre scene.



Returning to his role as Bones, Daniel Ward is on fire; he is the leading voice for the two’s mantra, ‘dollars to dreams’, and as the play progresses, his dream seems to come from within the white establishment, drenched in money. He bounds across the stage, and the chemistry between himself and Tambo, played by Clifford Samuel, is palpable. They are a treat to watch, with Clifford Samuel holding up the firmly academic lens on race relations, confronted by the grounded reality brought by Daniel Ward. As the argument shifts, it sits uncomfortably within our own cultural references. Can issues be fixed from the inside if the inside doesn’t regard you as human? Exploitation and black pain are strangely positioned as topics for a white audience to laugh at, and in a bold theatrical experiment, they did.


Tambo & Bones is a strange exercise in people watching. As a fan-favourite from 2023, it has its returning fanbase, but observing the effect of the comedy on the people surrounding me was fascinating. Across the board, this British audience cackles at the minstrel show, the self-degradation of the two. Towards the end of the first half, a track mixes the slave hymn ‘Wade In The Water’ with TikTok dances, a T-shirt cannon and a crazy light show. It’s sickening, but people loved it? As the second half goes on, the knife begins to twist, acknowledging the whiteness in the room and leaving you in silence, letting you consider what you have just done.



The play takes many directions in its attempt to prove its simple point - to make a white audience understand. It takes the shape of a minstrel show, a hip-hop concert, a rehearsed reading and a sci-fi dystopian puppet show - one which beautifully mirrors the scene from where we began. I’m reminded of Jane Elliott’s social study, taking rooms of people and dividing them by blue/brown eyes. The disturbing idea that the only way white people can understand and feel empathy is when it is still centred on themselves - what if it were you? This is the approach the play resorts to when the simple demands for quarters, the empathy, the pain, the music, and the stories don’t work. Fine - we’ll make it all about you. It satirises the entire concept of this argument, whilst also drilling it home in a chilling conclusion.


The overarching design is bold in every choice, from the rickety hand-painted minstrel show, a completely bare stage, to a lighting rig that rivals Glasto, Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey, and ULTZ’s design takes the big swing at every possible turn. Ciarán Cunningham’s lighting design delightfully smacks you in the face, and Richard Hammarton’s sound design booms across Stratford, but he needs something to blast. Beats from Excalibah and Roly Botha bring Dave Harris’s text to life, cleverly crossing the bridges between the different pockets of Hip-Hop, little references to Kendrick, A$AP Rocky, Jay-Z, and even a blink and you’ll miss it jab at Aitch.



From magic tricks, puppets, to music and epic set pieces, Matthew Xia brings an infectious sense of theatricality, almost childhood wonder to the direction. It is absolutely brimming with an unsettling sense of joy. Tambo & Bones is a remarkable piece of theatre, one that seems to inhabit a different space with each performance. It depends on the audience, the day, the theatre, the city, and this is what solidifies it as a really special piece of theatre that truly means something. To be honest, I don’t think I will ever understand the audience reaction the night I saw it, I was baffled. Matthew Xia and Dave Harris force everyone to sit with themselves to consider long and hard what they just did. 


Tambo & Bones is playing at Stratford East until May 10th, before heading to the Leeds Playhouse from May 12th - 24th.




Photos by Jane Hobson.

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