Skeleton Crew, Donmar Warehouse: An edgy, joyful evocation of the working-class, African-American experience

This heartfelt, captivating staging of Dominique Morisseau’s 2016 play Skeleton Crew is the concluding part of her Detroit trilogy, inspired by the city of her birth. It is also both the play’s UK premiere and the final production of Michael Longhurst’s five-year tenure as Artistic Director at the Donmar.

This tale of “the human effects of a global financial crisis” arrives here highly anticipated, having been nominated for three Tony Awards for its Broadway run in 2022. It’s set in the canteen of a Detroit car assembly plant in the midst of the 2008 recession, and depicts the lives of four black employees – Reggie, Dez, Faye and Shanita – who are in danger of losing their jobs if the Damoclean threat of imminent closure materialises.

With its gritty, poignant subject matter, Skeleton Crew emerges as both a trenchant critique of the excesses of capitalism, and an articulation of the plight of blue-collar workers callously exploited by a management whose sole concern is greater productivity. It sees Morisseau skilfully evoke the fragility and struggle at the heart of the urban, working-class, African-American experience while also deftly, joyfully and often humorously celebrating her characters’ resilience and the black quotidian.

Her muscular, edgy dialogue has no shortage of vernacular expletives and racial epithets – but, also brimming with mellifluous Ebonics, it is shot through with tenderness, warmth and psychological veracity. Moreover, it makes a refreshing change to see the lives of black American manual labourers depicted on stage with nuance and complexity, devoid of the habitual ghetto pathologies (stabbings, shootings, drug-dealing) that can only further reinforce racist stereotypes.

Matthew Xia directs a talented, youthful cast with aplomb and, despite one too many Pinteresque pauses, ensures that this production conveys pathos and levity, while retaining its visceral emotional power. Ciarán Cunningham’s stark lighting design and J Dilla’s strident Detroit hip-hop music between scenes also engender an oppressive air of escalating tension.

Tobi Bamtefa excels as Reggie, the fundamentally decent foreman vacillating between toadying to his unprincipled bosses in order to keep his own job and finding the moral courage to stand up for his fellow workers’ interests. Seasoned South African British actress Pamela Nomvete as Faye, the matriarchal lesbian and veteran employee of 29 years, brings the right mixture of fortitude, insouciance and vulnerability to the role.

Racheal Ofori enthrals as the pregnant Shanita – surely a talent to look out for – and as Dez, Branden Cook (in his professional stage debut) artfully conceals a kind heart and a moral compass beneath a carapace of belligerent swagger, hyper-masculine braggadocio and jocular badinage.

Given our own rampant cost of living crisis, the incoming Labour government and the accompanying sense of economic uncertainty, this feels like a timely, relevant and important play, its concerns both specific and universal. Notwithstanding its slightly underwhelming denouement, this farewell production of Longhurst’s is a great success, and one hopes that Timothy Sheader, his incoming successor, will stage more of Morisseau’s profoundly humane, thought-provoking and dignifying work.

Until Aug 24; donmarwarehouse.com