Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” at The Yard Theatre: Legendary 1970s Choreopoem Finally Arrives In London

Some legendary shows are rarely revived, rarely seen in London: one of these is surely Ntozake Shange’s celebrated choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Now, some 50 years after its premiere first in a women’s bar in Berkeley and then on Broadway, where it ran for about 750 performances, it finally arrives in London in a staging by Diane Page at the newly refurbished Yard Theatre, demonstrating not only its theatrical power, but also showing us why it’s been such a profound influence on British playwrights such as Ryan Calais Cameron, whose For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy is clearly a tribute to Shange’s work. Yes, legend is the right word.

On a bare stage, five actors play seven black “ladies”, each identified by a rainbow colour: Lady in Blue (Nadine Higgin), Lady in Red (Cherrelle Skeete) and Lady in Brown (Ibilola Rossi), Lady in Purple and Lady in Orange (both played by Alex Thomas-Smith) and Lady in Yellow, Lady in Green (both Tatenda Matsvai). Each character represents a major African-American area, from Harlem and New Orleans to St Louis, Chicago and Los Angeles. Scenes move chronologically from girlhoods in the 1950s to the arrival of 1970s feminism and, a later addition by the playwright, to the 1980s and 2000s. But references to HIV-AIDS, crack cocaine and the Iraq War are less significant than the personal feelings of the women.

Beginning with dance moves, and music by Jammz, the first to speak is Lady in Brown, who articulates the prologue of the evening — the foreboding “dark phases of womanhood”. Then the nursery rhyme chants of the others lead to Yellow’s story of losing her virginity on graduation night and then Blue’s account of her possession by music and dance marathons. While Red ends an eight-month-long affair, the others dance to overcome their sadness, and then attack the myths about rape which mean that women are not believed if they know their rapist, or are thought to have provoked the assault. Blue has an abortion.

Green invokes Sechita, the Egyptian goddess of love and beauty, while Brown tells a wonderfully warm tale about falling in love with Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Haitian revolutionary leader of the 1790s, from reading a book about him. If moving to Harlem results in a shrinking of the world into “six blocks of cruelty” for Blue, Red explores the ambiguity of responding to the male gaze, and three friends all fall in love with the same man. Orange has a similar experience of betrayal, Blue tries self-love and Green is angry that a man has taken her “stuff”. Darker material about HIV-AIDs, violence and toxic masculinity is finally soothed by a mutual “laying on of hands”: “i found god in myself / & i loved her / I loved her fiercely”, so “this is for colored girls who have considered suicide/ but are movin’ to the ends of their own rainbows”. Amen.

Shange’s text is powerfully focused on the personal. It’s full of feeling, both negative and positive. Moments of anguish are balanced by assertions of self-worth; grim realities are followed by brightly imaginative wonder. There is both sisterly solidarity and female betrayal; trauma and healing. The 20 or so poems whiz by, creating a kaleidoscopic panorama of experiences, which mix wry comedy with brutal disappointment. The elimination of much social and political context, such as Civil Rights, allows the playwright to concentrate her poetry on subjective emotions and interpersonal relationships.

While this lends enormous power to the show, it also makes some of the incidents oddly de-racialized. Most of what happens to these women surely also happens to white women; only occasionally is their race central to their experience. The “colored girls” of the poems are, in a sense, representative of all women. Toxic masculinity surely affects all women. And all men. And yet. If the final evocation of the god within speaks more to the spiritual traditions of African-American culture than to second wave feminist activism, the assertion of self-belief and concern with future generations generates an optimistic sense of the possibility of change.

Page’s production has an excellent cast, who deliver the necessary intensity and occasional hilarity, and perform choreographer Ingrid Mackinnon’s moves with evident pleasure as well as concentration. All the actors interact well on stage and there are moments of genuine solidarity as well as individual set pieces. Jammz’s music echoes with suitably moody ambience blended with strong percussive punctuation. Costumes by Cat Fuller are beautiful in themselves, although the show’s lighting could, I think, be improved. That said, this is an important theatre event which, despite its age, still resonates in its mix of streetsmart sass and repeated refrains: it feels both necessary and acutely true.

• for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf is at The Yard Theatre until 17 October.