Theatrically — and generally — it can seem very doom and gloom, with the Gate announcing its closure this week and pubs, along with the limpet-like black-box rooms above them, going dark at a rapid rate. But there is hope, culture lover, slowly building outwards upon itself from Queen's Yard.
The Yard is one of my favourite theatres: formerly rough and ready, cold, with seats that felt like a hellish punishment for your back. Starting 15 years ago as a temporary warehouse conversion, it simply stayed.
Now, after a £6.7 million capital development project and 14 months of hammering, we have a temple to sustainability and art, crowned with a ventilation chimney funnelling a literal breath of fresh air into the new space. My eyes are moistening just a little bit.
A quick tour with founder and artistic director Jay Miller, founding company member Sasha Milavic Davies and architect Takero Shimazaki is enlightening and silly in equal measure.
As Miller puts it: "We were playing with temporary, now we are playing with permanence." Amid the corrugated shell, mirrored windows break up the expanse, and the illuminated branded tower pulses like a beacon.
Redwood
Inside, the bar is a riot of primary colours, twice the size of the old one, with a seating area in one corner and toilets both numerous and luxurious (the old guard will rejoice).
Dramatic stairs race upwards and lead you into the 220-seat curved auditorium, its mock-concrete finish feeling very Grecian. Dressing rooms and showers, along with office space and a sizeable rehearsal room, lead off one way. Behind the stepped seating, a room full of radiators sits beneath the base of the ventilation tower, slowly drawing in cold air to be warmed, like a giant redwood.
An Antony Gormley sculpture, Domain CIII, teeters on the roof, while K-Briq bricks in the façade bring recycled construction and demolition waste into the building's bones. Part art gallery, part cool bar with an industrial edge, the new space hums with potential.
So why not step in the right direction and stage Ntozake Shange's seminal mid-1970s choreopoem? Diane Page directs like a kid in a sweetshop, pulling everything out of the dazzling new box.
Lighting designer Ali Hunter's rainbow lights spot and switch, stripe and slat across the five women, confidently demarcating each mini-monologue. Jammz's original music thunders and thumps through the new speakers and vibrates us down to our fillings.
But what does the play have to say 50 years on? The winding, image-filled language of 1970s activism is sometimes difficult to follow, much like Shakespeare's, but when it lands, the reality of sexism, racism, homophobia and classism roars around the freshly painted walls.
Swagger
Nadine Higgin as Lady in Blue is all swagger and swing; her section on the character's Puerto Rican heritage and her attempts to join a dance competition is both hilarious and heartbreaking. The famous "usedta live in the world" passage gives a tight snapshot of poverty and confinement.
Cherrelle Skeete as Lady in Red brings a world-weary, fizzing anger; Tatenda Matsvai as Lady in Yellow provides youthful optimism and verve; Alex Thomas-Smith, as Lady in Purple, weaves subtle beauty into a story about dancing at night in the Deep South; and Ibilola Rossi as Lady in Brown is stern and enigmatic.
The pressure is on: even with all the flashing lights and clever blocking, it is just the women and the words. For some this might drag, and if you aren't poetry-mad, maybe give this one a miss.
If you want to see physicalised jazz or a poem made flesh, however, come on down. Even if you aren't in the mood, the space is fantastic and Su Kitchen's dumplings are the perfect early-evening snack.
There is no plot, and sometimes no link between the outbursts, but the feeling, my God, the feeling. Skeete's section on an abusive relationship will stay with me until my dying day, especially its chasm of an ending. Between the abuse, the disappointment and the pain sits a Pandora's box of hope.
Every time the women sway their hips together, flick their long braids in unison or sing their hearts dry, your whole body reacts. A new cocoon for creativity, filled by such a complex and convoluted story of resilience: maybe things aren't so bad after all.
For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
The Yard
Queen's Yard
White Post Lane, E9
Until 17 October 2026.
