Seven balaclava-clad actors emerge on stage, rapping and filming each other. They tell the story of the drill scene through its own medium of song, social media posts and music videos. A joint winner of the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust award 2022, The UK Drill Project explores the criminalisation of a subculture with originality of form.
“Writing a lyric has never been so dangerous,” says a character, and we hear reports of how young black rappers are convicted of inciting gang violence based on their songs, despite lack of forensic evidence.
The story features the 079 gang, whose members variously lounge on a sofa, make social media posts or spit lyrics on a central platform. The drama of their lives is overlaid with news reports on the greater sociopolitical realities – youth centres being shut, for instance – and the moral panic around drill.
It is produced by the HighRise Entertainment theatre collective and while the layered use of music, video projection and snatches of testimonies is inventive and arresting, the story itself is confusing and disjointed with awkward comic interludes, although there is one effective scene which sees police officers “decoding” lyrics wrongly.
Written and directed by Dominic Garfield, with additional material and lyrics by the cast, characters speak in authentic MLE (multicultural London English) but they seem too generic. Some personal moments are explored – one character’s memory of racist bullying at school, another man’s unnerving entry into prison life – but these are too brief. Dialogue comes in snatches and sometimes actors talk over each other. The final scene, which digs into a character’s psyche as he identifies his dead brother, contains a depth of emotion that is missing from the rest of the drama.
The music, though, is truly exciting (executive music director Kwame “KZ” Kwei-Armah Jnr with thrilling live music and composition by Skanda Sabbagh). The cast are strongest when they are singing too. Its visual effects are immersive and evoke the feel of a drill club (lighting by Simisola Majekodunmi; video design by Dan Light).
Whatever its shortcomings, the production has energy and brings a symbolic validation of drill as an expressive art form, worthy of a central London stage.
