Octagon, theatre review: a mix of pleasure and problems

Given that its subject is American poetry slams, Octagon is a play of many words, some of them very beautiful. The trouble is that they stubbornly fail to coalesce into an entirely satisfying whole and, with a running time of three hours, greatly outstay their welcome. Octagon could easily become Hexagon and no one would lament the loss.

It takes a while to ease into the fluid rhythm and speech patterns of Kristiana Rae Colón’s writing but once we’re there we settle comfortably enough. We’re in a “fast, urban city” where eight attitude-packed young poets have their eyes on the prize of a place at the Octagon, the revered national slam championships. One last try-out stands between them and their goal and they have just three minutes to impress the judges in an “Olympic-style battle of words”.

And here the pleasures and the problems really start to mount. On the plus side, Nadia Latif’s production boasts superlative quick-fire poetry performances from all the actors; I bet they could enter real-life competitions and cause headaches for the favourites. On the downside, the punchy inner-city reality of their work finds scant reflection offstage; the wider picture remains frustratingly unclear, there’s an ill-explored framing device of a documentary film and the characters begin to seem increasingly self-obsessed and posturing.

Colón also gets far too bogged down with the fearsome, sexually voracious Prism (Lara Rossi, terrific), a woman who, apparently, has “wolves inside her”.

Until October 17, Arcola Theatre (020 7503 1646, arcolatheatre.com)

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