Michael Laurence

The Half-God of Rainfall

The Half-God of Rainfall

Inua Ellams’s The Half-God of Rainfall is an epic revenge fantasy about a basketball superstar who was born as a consequence of Zeus’s raping of a mortal woman. This multilayered piece uses poetry, music, and a mix of Greek and Yoruba mythology for a lyrical meditation on power, patriarchy, and the black feminist response to the #MeToo movement. 

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Poison

Poison

Dutch playwright Lot Vekemans’ Poison, directed by Erwin Maas for Origin Theatre Company, delicately tells a story of loss, pain and grief with an unspoken complexity. This gnawing two-person play, elegantly translated in to English by Rina Vergaano, unfolds in a nondescript white room with an equally nondescript vending machine, a perfect room for waiting. As the audience arrives, actor Michael Laurence, who plays a character known only as He, is found doing just that—waiting. He is checking his phone, pacing, drawing intrigue by the slightest shake of his foot. Laurence conveys the growing stress on He’s nerves, until the light goes down and the play begins. Soon after, his character is joined by an anxious Birgit Huppuch as She, and the intricate layers of their relationship begin to reveal themselves. After having been separated, without speaking, for nine years, the couple has been brought together to discuss what is to be done about the groundwater poisoning that is seeping into the grave of their deceased young son.

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