Review: For Colored Girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, Yard Theatre ★★★★

The Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick has just reopened after a major refurbishment and is now a well-structured, welcoming space. Its stated mission is to take more risks on new artists and new ideas. For Colored Girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf is not, in fact, a new work but it is such an important piece of theatre history that it is a delight to see it staged in London in its fiftieth anniversary year.

Written in 1976, by Ntozake Shange, it was only the second play by a Black American woman to reach Broadway, a full seventeen years after Lorraine Hansbury’s Raisin in the Sun. Forty years later, it still holds the record for longest running Broadway play by a Black playwright. Of London importance, it is the direct inspiration for Ryan Calais Cameron‘s For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy which has had enormous recent success.

For audiences who have seen For Black Boys.., the choreo-poem format – a mix of performed writing that blends poetry, dance, music – might not be a surprise. It is important to note though that this format was developed by Ntozake Shange and was a new style of play. Even the term choreo-poem itself is her creation.

Like its Broadway counterpart, the Yard has staged the play with no props. We open with five women united in movement with their collective motion suggesting a collective breath or a pulse.

Then a single searing voice cries out the opening lines:

somebody/anybody

sing a black girl’s song

It appeals that we:

let her be born

& handled warmly

And this production does treat all these women with incredible warmth and care. Each comes to us as a sort of everywoman, named after a different rainbow hue (five actors with two doubling here). They introduce themselves: “i’m outside chicago”, “i’m outside detroit”, … houston, baltimore… san francisco… manhattan… st louis. We may be touring the country but we get to know each as not just a representation but also a fully-fleshed individual with a deeply personal, and often painful, story.

While we hear of immense trauma: rape, sexual violence, abortion, child death, drugs and suicidal thoughts it avoids bleakness through a deft range of tone. We switch between agonising testimonies to lighter and more playful moments. The playful moments though are not without deeper meaning. Shange’s audiences would have recognised and enjoyed the childhood pleasure in singing the clapping game “mama’s little baby likes shortnin, shortnin” but also been alert to its more problematic minstrel heritage.

The talented cast handle these switches between tone with ease, sometimes telling their story, sometimes comforting, sometimes a silent but alert witness.

Director Diane Page has organised placement with care and the tableaux formed by the non-speakers are varied and thoughtful. There is an overall sense of camaraderie and a community of women here to listen and support.

This is the most notable at the end of “a night with beau willie brown” with the instant encircling of a devastated and collapsed Lady in Red (Cherrelle Skeete) .

Lighting by Ali Hunter underlines the rainbow theme of the characters with subtle tones for each forming shadows and dark spaces as the stories require. This is never over-stated. Costumes too, by Cat Fuller, are colour-coded (Lady in Blue, Lady in Brown and so on) but do not tip into Tellytubby territory. Each is a plausible outfit for the character portrayed which would not be out of place on the street.

Music by Jammz and a soundscape by Esther Kehinde Ajayi support the delivery, at times adding a brooding tension and then a crescendo as the worst of a story is retold.

As a continuous choreo-poem, it is generally staged without an interval. It is a demanding piece requiring an audience to remain attentive for almost a full two hours. From my side balcony seat, I could see the whole house and for nearly all of it, they were pin-drop silent with eyes forward. I only noticed the odd momentary lapse during the smaller-scale stories. At times, the pace felt a little fast and that one story began before the last had been absorbed.

We have a united ensemble team and each deliver their own moments of power and pain. The line that stayed with me was “nobody helped me because / nobody knew”. It is delivered by the Lady in Blue (Nadine Higgin) but could belong to any of the women. And in many ways, it represents the message of the piece. We were in the room, so now we do know. These black girls songs have, as Shange requested, been sung with grace and spirit. The Yard Theatre have let these women be born anew in 2026.