debbie tucker green’s adaptation of her stage play mixes spoken word, physical theatre and music to offer a vital perspective on racial injustice on both sides of the Atlantic
A mother is talking to her teenage son about what to do when approached by the police. He shows his palms. “Inflammatory,” she says. He puts his hands in his pockets. “Belligerent,” she says. “I didn’t even …” he protests. “Attitude,” she bats back, her voice matter-of-fact but tinged with despair. No matter what he says, wears, does, the list goes on. “Arrogance, insolence, defiance.” What if he looks confidently at them? “Good,” says his mum, “but not.” If he turns away? “Impudence, disobedience.” If he looks at the floor? “We didn’t raise you to look at no floor, son.”
And so begins ear for eye (BBC Two), debbie tucker green’s vital, eloquent and beautifully acted screen adaptation of her original stage play, which opened at the Royal Court in 2018 to rave reviews. I say adaptation, but this is so much more than a straight-up piece of filmed theatre. Which is great, because no matter how brilliant a play is, when the fourth wall becomes the black mirror of my own TV screen my suspension of disbelief is dismantled and the whole theatre comes crashing down. Happily, in making the delicate transfer from stage to screen, ear for eye ends up pushing the boundaries of both forms. Here is a blistering experimental film about British and American black experience, rarely seen side by side. The sparest and most unsparing of cine-poems. A play with extras using spoken word, physical theatre, installation and music to verbalise what remains beyond the bounds of articulacy.
