The Suit

The Young Vic

13 June

 

Here is a story, simple, slow and strange,

that’s lifted from another time and place

and set down on a stage that holds it like a pearl,

glistening in a clam shell.

There’s no embellishment, only a row of chairs,

an orange blanket and an old clothes rail

to summon up the bubbling township

of Sophiatown. But here is a world

and in it love and heartbreak, jealousy

and tortuous humiliation. Here is an awful loss of heart

and understanding, too much silence,

too much tongue-biting. It is a bitter lesson,

hidden in a soaring song, behind the bars of table legs

and in the hollow arm-holes of a suit jacket;

not about love at all but sheer humanity,

communion, language and the power of speech.

 

The Suit plays at the Young Vic until 16 June

http://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/the-suit