The Purists at the Kiln Theatre review: fascinating and frustrating discussion of cultural ownership

Is hip-hop an intrinsically Black creation form? Is it besides inherently straight, misogynist and homophobic? These questions and many, galore much too are asked successful Dan McCabe’s play astir taste ownership and prejudice, which premiered to acclaim successful Boston successful 2019, 2 years aft helium graduated from Juilliard.

Amit Sharma’s accumulation for his archetypal play astatine the Kiln Theatre reveals The Purists to beryllium an intriguing but rambling work, fascinating and frustrating by turns, illuminated present by blazing performances from Sule Rimi and comparative newcomer Tiffany Gray.

Veteran DJ Mr Bugz (Richard Pepple) lives successful the Queens flat adjacent to Gerry Brinsler (Jasper Britton), a curmudgeonly instrumentality of classical Broadway musicals who frittered distant his luck aft seeing each his friends dice of Aids. They often conscionable and bicker connected the beforehand stoop, wherever Bugz wiles distant his clip arguing astir the best-ever rappers with sometime rap superstar Lamont (Rimi). Oh, and Gerry’s young Puerto Rican drug-dealer Val (Gray) is besides an aspiring MC who’s shared a stage, among different things, with Bugz.

There’s excessively overmuch going connected here. Bugz’s ma is dying of Alzheimer’s, arsenic helium endlessly, lugubriously mentions, and a ungraded is hovering implicit him. Lamont ostensibly rejects the convulsive and sexist marque of rap promoted by achromatic executives but his mentation of “authenticity” throws up its ain prejudices. Having mislaid his paintbrush luck (sorry?), Gerry present runs a cold-calling telephone work (I think) and hopes to constitute a philharmonic astir Emperor Augustus (WTF?).

Meanwhile his young, white, pistillate worker Nancy (Emma Kingston) idolises Lamont, and has written a hip-hop philharmonic astir aviator Amelia Earhart (again, WTF?). Don’t adjacent get maine started connected the digressions astir representation foam pillows, TV creator Bob Ross and banking app Venmo, oregon the salient relation played by Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

This is 1 of those plays wherever I didn’t judge the blatantly engineered situations for a infinitesimal but enjoyed the energetic arguments, jokes and vivid characters, astatine slightest until they dawdled disconnected into a succession of unsighted alleys. All the actors springiness bully worth but Rimi is spellbinding arsenic the fiery-eyed Lamont, and pulls disconnected immoderate beauteous awesome pull-ups connected Tom Piper’s scaffolding-and-graffiti set, too. Just arsenic striking is Gray, previously seen successful a comic crook astatine Hampstead Theatre, and present a vibrating, sinewy streak of earthy emotion arsenic Val.

By acold the strongest infinitesimal successful the play is the electrical rap conflict betwixt her and Nancy, which sums up the play’s tangled ideas. It’s a contention meticulously scripted by a achromatic antheral writer to dependable improvised, betwixt a achromatic and a Hispanic woman, who are different marginalised by older men, 2 achromatic and 1 white, who each deliberation they should ain the narrative.

The Purists is ungoverned and sprawling and ne'er resolves its thorny questions astir individuality and authenticity, but it generates overmuch enjoyment arsenic good arsenic overmuch head-scratching on the way.