‘I don’t visit the past. The past visits me.’
Miss Myrtle is a sharp-tongued woman with an unkempt garden in a rapidly changing neighbourhood. To top it off, her grandson Rudy and his ‘close friend’ Jason need a place to stay, and local drunk Eddie keeps relieving himself against her garden wall. Rudy is pushing for answers about the past, but Myrtle doesn’t want to be troubled by duppies – she just wants some peace and quiet. As her brain starts to fight against her, far more complicated questions about grief, love, and understanding demand to be confronted, but she’s running out of time.
Miss Myrtle’s Garden, a wonderfully warm, witty, and life-affirming exploration of how we acknowledge the past, to enable us to confront life head-on in the present, it is running at the Bush Theatre, London until 12th July. This world premiere production, written by Danny James King, is directed by Bush Theatre’s Artistic Director, Taio Lawson. The cast is Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, Mensah Bediako, Diveen Henry, Gary Lilburn, and Elander Moore.
Writer Danny James-King is a London-based writer who got his start in theatre before moving into film. His first play, Bounty, was runner-up at the Alfred Fagon Awards and was given a rehearsed reading at The Kiln the following year. Before becoming a full-time writer, Danny worked in a number of different roles and spent a lot of time in The House of Commons, where he assisted various MPs and met several high-profile figures, including Jeremy Corbyn, David Cameron, and The Dalai Lama.
He spent 2016 in New York, where he worked at Out Magazine during one of the country’s most contentious elections. There he gained experiences which informed his creative voice and changed the trajectory of his career path. His time in New York inspired a stint of stand-up comedy. After opening for comedians such as Nish Kumar, Catherine Bohart, Larry Dean, and Stephen Bailey, he decided to concentrate on his career as a writer, rather than a performer.
Danny James King said, ‘Miss Myrtle is a unique theatrical character at the centre of the action on stage. She is an elderly, first-generation Jamaican woman who invites the audience into her inner world; however, it soon becomes apparent that, due to her dementia, she is not the most reliable narrator. Her world is disrupted by her Queer grandson and his partner’s arrival and then further rattled by the neighbourhood drunk and ghosts from the past. The play features five characters from very different backgrounds who are forced to find common ground amongst the weeds in Miss Myrtle’s garden. As they face emotions and challenges that so many of us share, it becomes clear to them that what they have in common is far more interesting than what divides them.’
The play draws on themes including dementia, same sex relationships, and the importance of access to outside space for all. The disparity of this access is stark, with Black people nearly four times as likely to have no access to a garden as white people, and those in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, casual workers, and the unemployed being almost three times as likely to be without a garden as those in professional or managerial positions.
Tickets can be booked at bushtheatre.co.uk or the Box Office on 020 8743 5050.
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