Tartuffe (Remixed) by Darren Raymond - ★★★☆☆
Darren Raymond relocates Molière’s seventeenth-century satire to a blended Black British family home amid the noise and colour of wedding festivities. The result is laugh-out-loud funny, familiar and astute about the tensions between family, faith and patriarchy.
At its best, it feels like watching a Black British sitcom unfold on stage. The family dynamics are immediately recognisable; the ensemble is consistently funny and there is something for almost everyone. Pidgin, Patois and Black British English sit alongside rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter, creating an enjoyable mélange that reflects the cultures coexisting within this family. Occasionally, however, the form draws too much attention to itself, disrupting the natural rhythm of the exchanges.
While its representation of Black British family life is often sharply observed, the production sometimes relies too heavily on established dynamics for comedy. Some interactions feel heightened beyond what is natural, making the humour feel overplayed.
What is striking about Tartuffe (Remixed) is how clearly it tackles patriarchy as the structure enabling Pastor Blake’s deception. Oga Afolabi’s position as father and head of the household means that his beliefs become decisions everyone else must live with. His family can see that Blake is a charlatan, but their knowledge and conviction carry little weight against his paternal and religious authority.
Usifu Jalloh plays this patriarch remarkably well. Oga is stubborn and frustrating, but never entirely unsympathetic. Grief has deepened Oga’s reliance on Christianity, giving emotional meaning to a devotion that otherwise appears misplaced. Jalloh holds these contradictions together, moving convincingly between comic self-importance, anger and vulnerability.
The production also explores a generational divide in relationships with the church. Oga and Grandma place an almost unquestioning trust in Pastor Blake, while the younger characters are far less reverential, reflecting the hold Christianity retains in many African and Caribbean families.
Mark Rylance’s Blake is predatory, ridiculous and very funny. His performance of humility is transparent to the audience but entirely convincing to Oga. Rylance and Nakeba Buchanan, as Elmire, electrify the second half. Buchanan lends urgency and emotional weight to Elmire’s attempts to be believed.
Morenike Onajobi is a standout as Kemi, delivering some of the production’s funniest moments with remarkable ease. Her timing is precise and she steals the scene whenever she appears. However, Kemi’s role as the outspoken best friend flirts with caricature, as the direction leans heavily on a familiar comic trope.
ULTZ’s set is nostalgic and comfortably lived-in, placing us immediately inside a recognisable family home rather than a generic theatrical version of one. The wedding costuming captures the colour, glitz and glamour of a Yoruba celebration.
The second half is weaker, losing some of the pace and clarity of the first. It becomes bloated in places before arriving at an ending that feels messy, incoherent and abrupt.
Despite this, Tartuffe (Remixed) is an intelligent and highly entertaining adaptation. Raymond gives Molière’s satire a convincing contemporary life, using it to examine grief, patriarchy, colonialism and the often uncritical relationship African and Caribbean communities can have with Christianity. The play feels at home within a Black British context, while retaining the absurdity at the heart of the original.
★★★☆☆
By Koehun Aziz-Kamara
Tartuffe (Remixed) is showing at Marylebone Theatre until 24 October
