PREVIEW
What: Just an Ordinary Lawyer: A Play With Songs
Where: Metro Studio, 1411 Quadra St.
When: Tonight, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $23 advance, $25 door (intrepidtheatre.com or 250-590-6291)
It was a pile of yellowing sheet music that started Taylo Aluko on the road to writing a play about Britain’s first black judge.
Liverpool-based Aluko is a Nigerian-born playwright, actor and singer. Victorian theatregoers might remember his one-man show Call Mr. Robeson, which he performed here four years ago.
About 17 years ago, a friend handed Aluko a stack of sheet music. It once belonged to the friend’s late uncle, Tunji Sowande, who made history in 1978 when he was appointed England’s first black judge.
Aluko, who is also a professional singer, was pleased to receive the music, an array of classical, folk and spirituals. But it mostly sat on his bookshelf. Then one night, after a performance of his Paul Robeson show, a Nigerian man introduced himself to Aluko as a historian.
“He said: ‘Have you heard of Tunji Sowande? Because you could do a play about him,’ ” Aluko said.
Aluko remembered the sheet music. His interest was sparked. When Aluko later took a writer’s residency at Liverpool’s Everyman Playhouse, he offered Sowande as a possible subject for a play commission. After his proposal was accepted, Aluko started his research in earnest, interviewing the nephew and other family members, including Sowande’s daughter, who lives in Nigeria.
He also talked to lawyers, some belonging to minority groups, who had worked under Sowande.
“They invariably said they owed their career to him, because he gave them a chance when it was difficult to find work as barristers.”
The result is Just an Ordinary Lawyer: A Play With Songs, which premièred in the U.K. last August.
Aluko chatted to the Times Colonist about his play from London’s Theatre Technis, where he had just completed a three-week run. Just an Ordinary Lawyer has drawn acclaim, including a four-star review from the Guardian, which deemed it “a fascinating show that interweaves politics, music and Sowande’s abiding passion, cricket.”
Sowande was born in Lagos, Nigeria, to a well-off family. His brother, Fela, was an internationally known composer. Sowande started off as a pharmacist. Yet he was mostly interested in music, excelling as a baritone singer, and learning to play jazz saxophone and drums.
Sowande immigrated to London in 1945 to study law, although it wasn’t his chief interest.
He originally intended to earn a living as a musician and, between studies, played with notables such as Ronnie Scott, Johnny Dankworth and Robeson.
He was called to the bar in 1952 and established himself as a talented lawyer. In 1978, Sowande was appointed judge of the Crown Court. He retired in the late 1980s and died in 1996 at the age of 84.
An award-winning singer who has performed in musicals and opera, Aluko included plenty of songs in Just an Ordinary Lawyer. He portrays Sowande as a dapper man, usually sporting a bow-tie.
The play examines Sowande’s struggles with racial discrimination. In one scene, he is summoned to a barrister’s chambers for an interview, only to be told he should return to “Bongo-Bongo land.”
Aluko sets Just an Ordinary Lawyer within the wider political context of the time. For instance, Sowande’s passion for cricket leads to a discussion of the infamous D’Oliveira affair of the late 1960s. International controversy flared after Basil D’Oliveira, a mixed-race cricketer slated to play for England in South Africa, was denied entry because of his ethnicity.
The play also touches on the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, as well as the historic black-power salute given by African-American athletes at the Mexico City Olympic Games in 1968.
The last time Aluko travelled to Canada was in November. He performed Call Mr. Robeson for a week-long tour of the Northwest Territories, an experience he enjoyed.
“It was unseasonably warm at minus 22,” Aluko said with a chuckle.