Tayo Aluko’s captivating musical performance is a masterful exposition of the horrors of war, writes Shabbir Lakha

There are two opportunities left to watch Tayo Aluko’s powerful one-man play, Coleridge-Taylor of Freetown, at the Bread and Roses Theatre in south London.

The ‘concert in a play’ masterfully tells the story of George Coleridge Taylor, a retired Sierra Leonean diplomat and nephew of the renowned black British composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge Taylor.

Set in 1999, when civil war had ravaged Sierra Leone for 8 years, George is forced to hide from rebels in Fourah Bay College, Freetown, where he’d taught as a philosophy professor.

While hiding, George is faced with the brutality of war – senseless violence, rape as a weapon of war, and utter dehumanisation of victims and perpetrators alike. In trying to shield himself from these horrors and his own inability to act, George takes his mind to his performances of his uncle’s music around the world.

But even in his escapism, he cannot separate those better times from the history of colonial plunder and slavery which has led to this moment, nor his own life and regrets, both personal and political. In one particularly poignant scene, he recalls being criticised by his then-wife Gloria for sitting on the fence over the Biafran genocide while he was the Sierra Leonean ambassador to Nigeria – “It’s complicated… there’s two sides to every story”.

The play, written and performed by Tayo Aluko, is both harrowing and moving. Aluko’s ability to shift scenes and characters is truly remarkable. One minute he is a war criminal rebel leader, a second later he is a cowering George fearful for his life, and then he is George in his element singing centre-stage in Durham or Caxton Hall or Nova Scotia. His beautiful singing, accompanied perfectly on the piano by Babatunde Sosan, transports the audience to a big-hall concert, and will introduce you to incredible works of poetry and resistance.

Tayo Aluko is an award-winning British-Nigerian writer and performer of Call Mr Robeson, a play about the legendary socialist and singer Paul Robeson, Just An Ordinary Lawyer about black British lawyer Tunji Sowande, and is the co-lead in the upcoming feature film Terra, which is premiering at the Raindance Film Festival in London next month.

He is also a socialist and Palestine solidarity activist, who has sung on demonstrations and picket lines, and last year was seen singing hauntingly as he was dragged away by police officers for holding up a sign opposing genocide. His anti-imperialism and thorough research come through in the play as he cleverly weaves in a history of colonialism and resistance to it that have shaped not just the setting of the play but of the world today.

The play’s programme given to attendees features a political essay on racism and authoritarianism in Britain today. The performance ends with a Q&A, where the audience asks Aluko wide-ranging questions from more details of the Sierra Leonean civil war and George’s life, to the movements and songs featured in the play.

I highly recommend watching the play while it’s on. The final two performances are on Friday 29 May and Saturday 30 May at the Bread and Roses Theatre in Clapham.

Tayo Aluko will also be performing Call Mr Robeson at the University of Lancashire in Preston on 19 June. Other upcoming performances can be found here.