Reviewed by Giada
The Lonely Londoners is extraordinary.
Unfortunately, I can’t help you catch it before its final performance on Feb 22nd - cause it is sold out*. Rightfully so.
*(check for returns on the day of the performance)
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| Photo by Steve Gregson |
So rather than the standard review, let me just rant about it.
1956, London. Henry ‘Galahad’ (Romario Simpson) arrives in the so-called motherland from Trinidad, carrying only a set of pyjamas, a toothbrush, and big hopes. Moses (Solomon Israel), who has been living in the city for a while, welcomes him and delivers his first lesson. To survive in a city that threatens to swallow you whole, you need three things - cigarettes, a map (which tells you not just where to go, but where not to go), and friends. Among them: Big City (Gilbert Kyem Jnr) and Lewis (Tobi Bakare). Sam Selvon’s original novel unfolds in ballads, vignettes of encounters and struggles of and from the newcomers , that Roy Williams distils into four sharply drawn characters. Each has their own arc, their own way of facing the racial and social barriers of the time. Unlike the book, where Moses’s voice emerges only at the end, Williams makes him the play’s centre of gravity from the start. He also gives him a deeply personal burdenof haunting regrets. Moses, the one who supposedly knows it all, is forced to confront himself. The past seeps through, gracefully revealed piece by piece, showing us a life he once had - a domestic happiness he abandoned without fully understandingwhy. Pride keeps him from doing what he advises Galahad to do: save up and go back home. What holds him in London? Is it longing? Fear of admitting failure? The shame of returning home empty-handed? His new life, forever haunted by the old one.
The cast brilliantly captures the brutal reality of building oneself back up after the crushing realisation that the dream is just that – a dream. They carry stories of resilience, loneliness, disillusionment, and systematic injustice. Of men who shed blood from a country that then refuses them. And yet, their struggles aren’t coated in pity or condescension. Instead, this is a testament to dignity, to the sheer will to keep going. Lured away from everything they knew with the promise of opportunity, they discover a society designed to exclude them. The jobs weren’t meant for them (but for the white immigrant), the housing wasn’t for them. The future, or the love, wasn’t for them. Pushed to the fringes, the question lingers: if the system won’t let you survive, what choice is left, if not violence?
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| Photo by Steve Gregson. |
Language is at the heart of both the novel and the play. Selvon’s choice to write in Creolised English was an act of defiance – decolonisation through literature. It shattered the expectations of the British literary canon, closing the gap between narrator and material. For accessibility, Williams adjusts the language slightly, but the characters still speak with a distinct Caribbean cadence. Language here is more than words- it carries the weight of displacement. At first, the protagonists’ pattern of speech is fragmented, broken - mirroring the fractures in their mind. But as their journey unfolds, so does their voice. The halting, hesitant dialogue transforms into monologues of rage and resistance. They reclaim a voice that was never meant to be heard.
Nevena Stojkov’s movements direction adds another layer to the storytelling, culminating in the final, breath-taking sequence. The physicality of men supporting each other – stretching each other’sclothes, lifting each other’s heads, guiding one another back onto the right path – becomes a ritual of survival. The pigeon-hunting sequence. What begins as a desperate act of necessity morphs intosomething almost sacred: a symbol of their camaraderie, their shared fight for dignity.
Williams is no stranger to Windrush-era stories and the exploration of black British identities. His Soon Gone: A Windrush Chronicle (BAFTA-nominated, 2020) and Death of England: Delroy proved his incisiveness as a playwright. But here, in The Lonely Londoners, he does something more. He doesn’t just adapt Selvon’s work—he detonates it onto the stage.
Ebenezer Bamgboye’s direction makes the play feel utterly contemporary. The way these characters are trying to resist to the city defining them it’s more than a story-telling device, it’s a survival tactic, a form of resistance against erasure. Bamgboye crafts the idea of an outside world that is cold, unyielding, always watching. The sun barely cuts through. Words freeze in mid-air, disappearing before they fully form. And yet, the atmosphere of quiet oppression seems not to penetrate onto the stage. There is warmth. Of music, color, friendship —small sanctuaries carved out of an indifferent city.
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| Photo by Steve Gregson |
This production is not just necessary—it is urgent. In the shadow of today’s immigration policies, rising right-wing nationalism, systemic racism, and class warfare, the story’s resonance is painfully clear. The betrayal that Selvon’s characters experience in the 1950s was not the first, not the last, but only one of many. The injustice never ends —it just evolves.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
To learn more about the Windrush generation and the scandal, read here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-historical-roots-of-the-windrush-scandal/the-historical-roots-of-the-windrush-scandal-independent-research-report-accessible
You can find out more about the production and check for returns at https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/the-lonely-londoners/
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