White Guy On The Bus Takes a Lacerating Look at American Society

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Finborough's moving play shows waters of racism still run deep, says Bill Hagerty

Ray and wife Roz are comfortable, middle-class Philadelphia
liberals; he a financial adviser, skilled in ‘making rich people richer’, she a teacher at a wrong-side-of-the-tracks school where the African-American pupils are archetypal of the black economically dispossessed. The couple’s racial tolerance is clear from their early exchanges. Yet, uncomfortably, they sound too perfect, as if doubts and ill-feelings  lurk somewhere beneath their Caucasian skins.

It would be unkind of me to reveal the savage event that~ sends Ray on a series of bus journeys – the only white man on board – even though it occurs early in the action. Suffice to say it is only after he sits alongside black student nurse and single parent Shatique and makes to her an appalling proposition involving her jailbird brother that his motives become clear.

In terms of moral rectitude, Ray is going nowhere. Despite good intent and appreciation that his privileged life can be only a dream for millions of fellow citizens, there is the darkness in his soul that propels him.

Directed by Jelena Budimir with the pace of a taut thriller, White Guy on the Bus is not an easy ride. It’s portrait of Philadelphia – America’s most racially-divided city – will certainly not entice you to go there on holiday.

But the play’s lacerating view of modern American society, in much of which the racial and economic divides remains unhealed, is especially pertinent now that a loose cannon is installed in the White House and the country edges towards an isolationism that bodes ill for all.

Full marks to the Finborough cast of five: London-based American Donald Sage Mackay as Ray, Canadian Samantha Coughlan as Roz, Carl Stone and Marina Bye as the couple’s son and his partner, and, especially, Joanna McGibbon, movingly capturing the tension that envelopes Shatique.

It is many years since black Americans occupied seats at the back of the bus. Dr King would have acknowledged that for many the journey isn’t over yet.

White Guy on the Bus plays until 21 April. For tickets, call the box office on 01223 357851 or book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

April 6, 2018