Safe Space review – lively campus comedy wrestles with the culture wars

Minerva theatre, ChichesterJamie Bogyo’s debut play recounts the renaming of a Yale University college with broadstroke humour and some exquisitely sung a cappella interludesWhat happens when public statues stop serving as historical markers of civic pride and become offensive to many in the present? Sometimes they are forcibly toppled, such as in the case of 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, whose bronze statue was rolled into Bristolian waters in 2020. But several years before that, there was protest over Yale University’s Calhoun College, named in honour of 19th-century alumnus, John C Calhoun, a white supremacist and zealous advocate of slavery (the college was renamed after Grace Murray Hopper in 2017).The demand for its renaming is the subject of this debut play by writer-actor Jamie Bogyo, who is a Yale alumnus himself. A fictive statue of Calhoun sets the culture wars into full swing; a petition, organised by Omar (Ivan Oyik), is circulating the dorms. Connor (Bogyo) is its main opponent. He rails against virtue signalling and snowflakes, but insists he is not racist (“I voted for Obama”). He also tries to co-opt his Black room-mate, Isaiah (Ernest Kingsley Jr), for his cause. Meanwhile, Connor’s girlfriend, Annabelle (Céline Buckens), who comically manifests all the signs of white guilt, has ambitions to become president of Yale’s Women’s Leadership, but is pipped by freshman Stacy (Bola Akeju). Continue reading...

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