Postcards from Africa

Daniel Nelson

It’s a pleasing idea: 11 individuals fan out across 54 African countries to compile a state-of-the-continent report for the Arcola Theatre stage.

Will their musical and verbal experiences, presented to their ancestral mother, be a celebration or a funeral oration?

A celebration, of course. What else would you expect from the cradle of humanity, the world’s most diverse land mass?

Through a rapid, viugorough cascade of vignettes (beginning with a brilliant cameo of a Kampala shopkeeper) the 11 friends find life-enhancing joy, hospitality, humour and exuberance. But they also occasionally stray into darker sides, with frightening intimations of violence in Cameroon and Libya.

I was happy to be swept along by the show’s verve and ambition: happy, too, that Africa - for once - is portrayed positively and sympathetically. Even when one of the team is aggrieved at receiving a parking ticket outside a cathedral in Seychelles, she is reminded that she would face a penalty for parking outside St Paul’s or 10 Downing Street in London. In the end, however, 54.60 Africa is undermined by its own straitjacket..

Each travelling friend has only a few days in each country. So the impressions are like postcards written in a rush before boarding the next flight. Most of the incidents and rapidly acquired snippets of history are similar to those that might be experienced by a white tourist on a whistle-stop tour.

Yes, interesting thoughts are voiced along the journey (“You may be Black, but you’ll always be British first”), but there’s no real dramatic thread to hold it all together.

Nevertheless, I love 54.60 Africa, writer Femi Elufowoju (who achieved his aim of visiting 54 African countries before he was 60) and the all-singing all dancing cast for reminding us of Africa’s special warmth.

• 54.60 Africa, £15-£39, is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street E8 3DL until 12 July. Info: Arcola