A girl and her piano. That is all.
Elephant at the Bush Theatre is a remarkable story about a girl finding her voice in a white middle-class world.
Singer, Songwriter, Actress, Composer, Writer. Anoushka Lucas has it all. Her recent play, Elephant, is a Bush commission and first appeared as part of the Bush’s Protest series of videos in 2020, a response to the murder of George Floyd. I feel that – unfortunately – it has not lost relevance since.
When Lylah is 7, a piano comes through the sky to occupy the majority of the living room in their council flat – not on an estate. Lylah is instantly fascinated by the 88 keys (52 white and 36 black, as we learn) that resonate sound and make our bodies move. She is from a mixed cultural background with grandparents from Cameroon, India, France and… Dorset. Due to her family-situation and her good grades, she can attend a Lycee Francais in London on a scholarship. Lylah is adamant to fit in, speaking French during class and English on the playground. In the course of the play, Lucas tells her story by flitting through different stages of Lylah’s life, jumping from scene to scene with changes in voice and body language and, of course, the style and capability in which she plays the piano. We meet a couple of producers with her in 2015 – Lylah is 26 and her first song plays on the radio. We meet Leo, the drummer that sparks a new interest in her. We go back to her school days and hear about Lylah’s first encounters with racism and find ourselves in 2017, when Lylah is rejected by producers for not being “urban” enough, getting asked to be less theatrical and lose her posh way of speaking. All while hitting a low in her relationship over gaps that the majority of the population is unaware (or ignorant?) of.
When Lylah asks her piano “Where did you come from? Why are you here?” the story of the Elephant gets a second layer. We hear stories about how the mahogany corpus of the piano is neatly tied to the history of slavery and how the ivory is gruesome evidence of humanity’s exploitation of nature. And how racism, colonialism and class are still deeply embedded in today’s society. It is the constant movement between eras that kept me on my toes. It is the elegance of how the different themes are woven into the story that makes me question some of my own perceptions on the spot.
Lucas brilliantly portrays Lylah, as she lets us see a glimpse into her world, her struggles and her emancipation. I was deeply impressed by the variety of accents and voices she used to bring different characters on the journey of Lylah’s life. The songs she composed gave me goosebumps. I love that Lucas prompted that for following productions original songs have to be composed each time and that Lylah needs to be played by a pianist.
Elephant at the Bush Theatre is a wonderful performance full of theatrical talent, unique vocals and admirable skills on the piano that make me wish I had not abandoned lessons when I was younger.
{🎟 AD – PR invite – Tickets were gifted in exchange for an honest review}
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