Wowsers. There’s a new play out there that tells its story in forward chronological order, and doesn’t confusingly bounce back and forth between years or even decades. “Did you know,” I thought to myself as the audience filed out afterwards, “it’s entirely possible to delve into characters’ pasts without going into full-blown flashback scenes?” I am, of course, being facetious: there are plenty of shows that gloriously lack flashbacks. It just doesn’t feel as though very many new plays do at the moment.
There are no gaping plotholes to report, either. I had thought about whether a cooking group in a secure hospital (that is, hospitals that provide accommodation, treatment and support for people with severe mental health problems) was something that was unlikely to occur in reality, given the risks with knives and hot stoves. Both indeed play their part in the narrative (spoiler alert: nobody gets stabbed). But kitchens are used in secure hospitals as part of occupational therapy – and a wide scope of skills is explored in this play, including meal planning, safe kitchen hygiene and even budgetary constraints.
It was sometimes easy to forget that the group members were even facing substantial mental health challenges, because the group dynamics were often similar to, say, a team in a place of employment, with clashes of personality and differences of opinion. “Mi can’t work wid him,” Leroy (David Webber) even says of Ty (Corey Weekes). It’s something he might well have said, in a different context, to a company’s human resources department. As for the occupational therapist in charge of the cooking sessions, Naomi (Aimée Powell), her own life, both professionally and personally, is under pressure, and it says something about failings in mental health provision that she receives more empathy from the service users in her group than she does from management.
Without ever being preachy about it, the play challenges the stereotype that black men are perennially aggressive. “What you getting emotional for?” Ty asks Daniel (Darrel Bailey) during one of many tender moments. The show, which lasted, according to the pre-show announcement, “approximately one hour and thirty-three minutes”, an approximation if ever there was one, gave each character sufficient time and space for the audience to get to know them properly. The service users have known each other for some time, but their understanding – and misunderstanding – of one another was never impenetrable.
The production could have done without some odd inter-scene actions and movements, which wouldn’t have been out of place in an interpretive dance piece at Sadler’s Wells, but here, frankly, added nothing to the theatrical experience. That is a rather minor point, however, in a show that highlights how black men are over-represented in secure hospitals, and are kept inside with the odds against them in various ways. And yet, they are all incredibly (or perhaps un-incredibly) human, with deep care and concern for their families on the outside, as well as for one another. A gritty and heartfelt portrayal of a world which relatively few people, by default, know very much about.
Review by Chris Omaweng
“Yuh got a whole life beyond here. Dis is just one part of it. It is a brutal part, but it’s just one part.”
Ty, Leroy and Daniel have signed up to a new Caribbean cooking group led by their occupational therapist, Naomi, who really needs it to go well. Believing in the healing power of food, Naomi is brimming with plans to evoke memories of Sunday dinners at home with family, to get the men to talk, share, and create something special.
But when you’re locked in a secure hospital, too much food for thought can be a bad thing. Each Sunday, the hospital is transformed by the smells and flavours of home, and together the four embark on a challenging journey of self-discovery, where it’s not just the pans that threaten to boil over. As the heat in the kitchen rises, the group is forced to confront uncomfortable truths – not only about their true selves, but also about the actions that led them to become trapped with the system.
CAST
Naomi – Aimée Powell
Ty – Corey Weekes
Daniel – Darrel Bailey
Leroy – David Webber
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer – Sophia Griffin
Director – Corey Campbell
Dramaturg – Grace Barrington
Set Designer – Claire Winfield
Sound Designer – Xana
Lighting Designer – Ali Hunter
Costume Designer – Naomi Thompson
Dramatherapist – Wabriya King
Assistant Director – Simeon Blake-Hall
Shadow Assistant Director – Farrah Hughes
A Bush Theatre and Belgrade Theatre Coventry co-production
AFTER SUNDAY
Bush Theatre
10 November to 20 December 2025
