“Degraft’s snappy verbal delivery makes strong use of vivid comic irony to show how American society can be too geared up for stereotypes which can inflict roles on us all.”
Editorial Rating: 4 Stars (Nae Bad)
Quaz Degraft describes his show as “a dark comedy solo play about an ambitious Black accountant fighting for a seat at the table in the high-stakes world of Wall Street”. Presented in a light and lively style, Degraft plays a first-generation immigrant Ghanaian kid called Kofi whose traditional and ruthlessly ambitious father uses his belt to drive his son into the “respectable” profession of accountancy. The parental idea of the key to the American dream is to acquire qualification as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).
The fact that the play opens and closes with Kofi in the fluorescent orange jumpsuit of a Federal Prison inmate is a vivid indicator of how the American Dream can turn into a nightmare. It’s a story about a search for identity as much as success, but from what Kofi’s family can see of life in New York City, financial success is identity.
However, the street culture of New York offers too many tempting distractions for the young Kofi that pull him away from the direction in which his father points. Degraft’s snappy verbal delivery makes strong use of vivid comic irony to show how American society can be too geared up for stereotypes which can inflict roles on us all. But is the system of huge corporate behemoths in the city’s financial district designed to admit kids like Kofi? He is working class as well as black – will those two things make him too much of an outsider? Will getting a CPA license solve his problems?
Dressing himself in the uniform of his target profession – a suit – Kofi talks his way into an entry-level position that he hopes will lead him to becoming “the (pre-slap) Will Smith of Wall Street”. But as this pacy drama quickly reveals, the rarified atmosphere of high finance has as many pitfalls as life at street level; and it’s not just white-collar crime that’s committed by the masters of the universe in their plate-glass corner offices.
This engaging one-man drama offers its audience two contemporary themes: that of the immigrant experience of finding a way to be admitted into a new culture; and the shock of toxic cultures that outsiders can experience once doors are opened to let them in.
Well worth a look, but the Stephenson Theatre in TheSpace @ Surgeons’ Hall is a small, intimate venue and seats will only get harder to come by. The show runs for most of August, but don’t leave it too long to grab a ticket.
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