Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre
October 30, 2018

A young woman walks down the street, shell-shocked, having just received some terrible news. She briefly marvels at how, inexplicably, life seems to be continuing as normal. For Sister, tragedy has infected this previously unremarkable day, turning her world upside down and inside out. How can it be that people are going about their business as usual when everything has come crashing down around her?

Zahra Newman in random. Photo © Daniel Boud 

random comes to Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre after touring in 2010, and what a potent piece of theatre it remains. In this play by debbie tucker green (who deliberately spells her name without capitals), lucidly directed by Leticia Cáceres, the brilliant Zahra Newman effortlessly portrays four members of an Afro-Caribbean family in London: Mother, Father, Sister and Brother. With a runtime of just 50 minutes, green layers detail upon detail in this compassionate portrait of a family, taking us through the mundane rhythms of their day-to-day life until it is horribly interrupted by a random act of violence.

Written in 2008 as a response to the highly politicised subject of knife crime in London, green cuts through...