Polka Theatre in Wimbledon presents Levi David Addai’s first play for children – I Have A Dream. The play tells the story of Martin Luther King’s ground-breaking speech through Raheem, a discenchanted 21st century teenager, who ends up meeting King’s daughter Yolanda. Through conversation, the pair reach an understanding of how King changed history, and his continued relevance today. If you haven’t booked – do so! The actors were great, the story cleverly told – this is grown-up theatre for children.
We were lucky enough to enjoy a post-play question and answer session with Levi, artistic director Jonathan Lloyd and the two actors, Troy Glasgow and Amelia Donkor. All four answered the intelligent and insightful questions from the young audience with great charm and passion.
Look out for the full review of the play for children in the next edition of Ink Pellet by one of Polka Theatre’s Young Voices Panel. But here is one to whet your appetite…
By Matthew Eagling Young Voices Panellist
The play started with Martin Luther King Jr sitting at his desk trying to write the speech for his most famous proclamation.
The scenery on the stage stays the same all the way through. A desk, a bed and two chairs are permanently in place. The backdrop is made up of finished and unfinished placards and posters with slogans which would have been used during Martin Luther King’s protests.
The story is all about two children from different eras in time. One from modern day and one from the late 1960’s. The children start off at completely opposite ends of a scale but as the story progresses, they come closer and closer together.
One part of the play I quite liked was the time vortex which Raheem falls through. I like the way that random things from different eras kept popping up, getting older and older the further back he travelled.
The acting in the play was very good. I think that actors switched very well from the roles of adults to the roles of children. When the two children, Raheem and Yolanda, were together, I started to think of them really as children and not actors.
When Raheem switched back to Martin Luther King at the end, if I hadn’t seen him before and Martin Luther King was still alive, I really would have thought that the real martin Luther King was on stage.
In the play there were only two actors and each had a multiple role. I found that they switched between American and English accents with flawless precision, so you could almost believe that they were four different actors in the play.
The illusion of having more actors was also very effective. I liked the way you heard the person’s voice and saw the door open, but they didn’t come in the room. It was a very effective way of still using only two actors and to allow two characters played by the same person to both be “on stage” at the same time.
I would recommend this show for children of about 8 upwards as the play is aimed at a very wide age range as the language is not too complex and there is not the sadness of Yolanda finding out about her father’s assassination.