Elephant, Menier Chocolate Factory review - subtle, humorous exploration of racial identity and music

This charmingly eloquent semi-autobiographical show – which first played at the Bush Theatre in 2022 – tells the story of a girl whose life growing up in a council flat is transformed by the arrival of an upright piano. Lylah – like the show’s creator, Anoushka Lucas – is the daughter of an Anglo-Indian father and a French Cameroonian mother, and her subtle, often humorous, exploration of her racial identity becomes intertwined with who she is as a musician.

Lucas has won several plaudits as an actor and singer in shows including Regent Park Open Air Theatre’s Jesus Christ Superstar and the Young Vic’s Oklahoma!. In this new production of her solo show – for which she has written the script and composed the songs – she starts with a quasi-philosophical reflection on the mechanisms of sound, making us consider how the vibrations from the piano are physically connecting all of us.  

It’s a gently ingenious way of encouraging us to think about how music, far from being an abstract concept, derives part of its power from quite literally getting under our skin, fusing us no matter what our race or class. She heightens the sense of this transcendent aspect of music by describing how when her upright piano first arrives at their flat, they have to take the windows out to get it in, so that it swoops into their home like a mythical being as their surroundings flood with light.

Though the piano's impact is positive, it brings with it a complex history and Lylah soon realises that she has more in common with it than she ever imagined. Throughout the show, Lucas is adept at metamorphosing from the happy little girl Lylah once was to the young woman who’s forced to ask difficult questions about the way people perceive her mixed race identity. As a schoolgirl, she gets a scholarship to London’s French Lycée, where she excels, and though she’s teased by one girl for the colour of her skin, she doesn’t feel herself to be an outsider. But then she realises that – as with her piano – people misunderstand who she is, because they fail to comprehend her heritage.

While most people focus on the great European piano making tradition, Lylah becomes transfixed by the fact that some pianos are made from mahogany – which comes from the West Indies – and ivory keys that are plundered from elephant tusks. Since ivory tusks are embedded so deep in the elephant skull that they reach almost to the eye, they can only be removed either by causing unbearable pain, or – more habitually – by killing the animal outright.Jess Edwards’ elegantly conceived production puts the upright piano on a revolving stage, where it is contained within the smaller of two concentric circles. As Lucas talks, sometimes she lies on the piano, sometimes she balances on it, and at – moments of vulnerability – sometimes she huddles herself into it, as if seeking protection.

One of those moments is when Lylah is talking to producers about putting out an album, and they try to package her as the next Alicia Keys. She’s advised that she needs to capitalise more on being working-class, as well as on her ethnic origins. Though this advice is tone-deaf, it's eclipsed by another set of stereotypes that's hurled at her when she goes to stay with the wealthy family of her white boyfriend, Leo, and realises how blind they are to the consequences of empire. When Leo's grandmother asks her in fruitily upper-class tones whether she is a "quadroon", Lylah bites her tongue, only to get drunk later in the evening and castigate the entire family for their cultural insensitivity.

It says much about Lucas that – even at this moment – the show never feels like a rant; it’s all part of a subtle, playful discourse on the different things that make us who we are. Who we inherit our laugh from, our eyes, our freckles, and yes, the colour of our skin, is often the result of random encounters that sometimes feel consequential and others not. 

The evening is interspersed with songs that she delivers in a powerfully mellifluous singing voice. Laura Howard’s engaging lighting design flickers to the notes so that it feels as if we’re part of an enjoyable synaesthetic experiment. 

What Lucas ultimately proves is that her talent – and indeed her identity – is too nuanced to be put into any kind of box. This show feels like an engaging first chapter – it will be fascinating to see what she writes about next.

• Elephant at the Menier Chocolate Factory till June 29
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