Every
Line
Is
Weighed down
With
Expectation...

The highly stylised delivery of Comrade Bukari is a textbook example of theatre that demonstrates rather than enacts. Choreographed movements and sounds underline the spoken text, as well as significant (and rather long) pauses between sentences. Technically these aspects are immaculate – the actors’ delivery is exact and the performance appears to be very neat, but heavy with underlying meaning. But which meaning? The script ranges from rather predictable clichés to short passages that capture the rough-friendly banter amongst adolescent males quite well. The first are probably beyond hope; the latter could be made into an interesting study of characters if they were not brought to a forcefully imposed dramatic conflict and were better served by a direction that does not try to fill them with a profundity the text does not support. As it is, the stylised performance looks like a glittering but empty shell.