By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHEN? Friday 20 February, opens 27 February and runs through 5 April 2025 RUNTIME: 120 minutes (no interval)

Kene (2018’s Best Theatre Actor monsta winner for Misty, Bush Theatre) plays tailor Walker in 70s London with designs on a Carnaby Street business who is part of the Windrush generation negotiating aspiration with loss of community.

• Read on for reasons including how Alterations is laugh-out-loud funny but also illuminating about difference, ambition and sacrifice

Author Michael Abbensetts was a Guyana-born British writer who settled in England in the 1960s and the 1st black British playwright commissioned to write a television drama series, Empire Road, which the BBC aired from 1978 to 1979.

The titular Alterations refers to the impossible task Walker and his colleagues are set by businessman Mr Nat to take up many dozens of pairs of trousers over 24 hours which could realise Walker’s Carnaby Street’s dream if successful and ruin his employer’s firm if a failure.

This comedy allows us to get to know Kene’s hard-working tailor who is cheating on his wife and daughter with a white woman and those he works with including less-driven business partner Buster, played by Gershwyn Eustache Junior, awaiting news about his about-to-give-birth wife and fantasist Horace, a funny Karl Collins, who appears to have designs on the mother of Walker’s child.

Alterations also refers to the immigrant experience of leaving home and discovering a country where they encounter racism and violence and where van driver Courtney, an articulate Raphel Famotibe, complains there aren’t enough jobs and opportunities for him to make more of himself.

Music and reggae in particular is used evocatively by director Lynette Linton (Shifters, Duke Of York’s) to conjure up a world which may be historically behind us but with its ramifications still evident in many of the ways in which we live our lives today.

We later learn Mr Nat, a quietly moving Colin Mace, gives Walker his big break because he recognises a little of himself in our hero not least when reflecting towards this fine show’s end: ‘The British love an underdog and just look at what you’ve achieved.’

We note this 1978 play now has additional material by Trish Cooke and we wonder whether it was to give its female character, Walker’s wife Darlene brought vividly to life by Cherrelle Skeete, a little more vim and agency because she’s quite formidable and uncompromising here.

Linton gives us a revolving stage allowing 2 rooms in the tailor’s shop to be shown and many dozens of additional garments to be lowered on rails into view as the work increases and the clutter of the venue overwhelms.

Not only is the immigrant experience given an authentic voice here but Kene, 1 of our finest actors, gives a complex portrait of a man driven to succeed even at the expense of much that he holds dear.

Alterations is stylish, laugh-out-loud funny but also illuminating about difference, ambition and sacrifice.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy National Theatre Tickets
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