We’re glad that The Fellowship has finally opened. Plagued by numerous Covid-related delays, and losing its lead actor Lucy Vandi a week before press night due to ill health, the play has had a rather tumultuous journey to the Hampstead Theatre stage but has finally arrived.
The latest offering from playwright Roy Williams – we caught his state-of-the-nation address Death of England at the National Theatre shortly before the pandemic hit – it considers a range of topical issues through the lens of the children of the Windrush generation.
Cherelle Skeete has stepped into the lead role at scarcely a week’s a notice and, if it wasn’t for the occasional appearance of a script on stage, you wouldn’t be able to guess – she’s a force to be reckoned with as middle-aged Dawn.
Opposite her is her sister Marcia (Suzette Llewellyn), a barrister who is desperate to distance herself from her past. Over the course of the play we are introduced to the generation that preceded them and the generation that’s following them, and their respective views on the world – it’s certainly an ambitious intergenerational drama.