The fantastically monickered Cush Jumbo is a girl with twin passions. They’re passions she’s had from when she were a nipper, and those passions are Josephine Baker and performing on stage. In Josephine and I she combines them to dazzling effect.
The scene is a 1920’s St Louis nightclub and we’re sitting slap bang in the middle of it, fiddling with the candles on our tables, wondering if the ad hoc chairs below us are going to take our weight, when a girl rushes onto the stage. She’s so sorry she’s late, she says, breathlessly, as she hauls a real dog out of her bag and thrusts him (Henry) into the stage manager’s arms. She was on her way here, she continues, gasping, and got a call from her agent about a call-back for a part in a big American series. She had to take it, she just had to….
And there. We’re hooked. Hooked into ‘I”s word, whoever ‘I’ is. Is she Jumbo herself, or is she a construct, a part Jumbo’s playing? It’s only about half way in that we begin to twig and by then it really doesn’t matter anyway.
Jumbo, who stars in her own debut play, interweaves Baker’s life story with a first-person narrative of an aspiring young actress, finding links, be they experiences of racism in different eras or how best to juggle career and family.
The ‘I’ in the piece has loved Baker since she was a kid and saw her in Zou Zou, “and she wasn’t the maid. She was the star!” This led to a Tiny Tears doll makeover, and dolls are used throughout Jumbo’s show, whether it’s Tiny Tears Josephine herself responding with nods and shakes of the head to ‘I”s questions, or hidden in the audience to represent the ‘rainbow tribe’ of twelve children that Baker eventually adopted, and gathered up by Jumbo singing as Baker later on in the show.
As ‘I’ grows up, her fascination with Baker extends from collecting memorabilia of her life and career, to wanting a career on stage for herself too. She puts shows on in her family living room and charges her parents entry and a penny for milk and a cream cracker in the interval.
Shuttling back and forth between ‘I’ and Baker, Jumbo excels in quick changes and making the audience believe in a split second that they’ve been taken from one woman’s world to another’s. Along the way we learn much about Baker’s extraordinary life, beginning in a broken home in St Louis, through international stardom as a dancer and film star, through to her triumphant comeback show in 1973 and her death soon after.
Jumbo’s energy and passion is a thing of beauty. One minute she’s Josephine, a 13 year old getting married to get away from a dead end life in St Louis, the next she’s ‘I’ and figuring out how to juggle the need for kids with a seven series US deal that looks like it’s coming her way. Then it’s back to Josephine, famous now and back in the States but still being made to get to her hotel penthouse suite by the back door.
I wish we’d had a little more of Jumbo doing Baker’s early googly-eyed, loose-limbed performances as when she briefly does them, she’s so good you want to see more of what made Baker such a huge star.
But that’s not a quibble: it’s a wanting more. And I left this terrific show wanting more, so much so that I bought the play script (unheard of from this penny-pinching reviewer!)
Cush Jumbo is a star in the making and if you’ve any interest in theatre, in LIFE, go and see this wonderful show.
WHAT: Jospehine and I
WHERE: The Bush Theatre, Uxbridge Road, London
WHEN: Until August 17, various times
TICKETS: £10 & £15
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes
MORE INFO: CLICK HERE:
WOULD I SEE IT AGAIN: Yep yep yep
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