...cake review, Theatre Peckham: A claustrophobic tale of intergenerational trauma

It’s a muggy evening in late April. Two electric fans are doing their best to cool things down, as a woman dances around her apartment, music getting louder and louder. Something, we can tell, is about to happen. This is the world of ...cake, a new play from Bruntwood Prize nominee babirye bukilwa performed at London’s Theatre Peckham. It is at times funny but often grotesque, bukilwa’s lyrical script telling the story of two Black queer women and their deeply interwoven trauma.

At the centre is Sissy (Danielle Kassarate), who greets the audience in a dressing gown, silk headscarf and huge gold hoops. She has a glass of wine in one hand and a spliff in the other; Lenny Kravitz and Sade (her favourite) are blaring from the record player. Her home shows signs of previous care, but is now in a state of distress. Bin bags of rubbish are strewn across the floor, mouthwash next to alcohol in the kitchen. Even the flowers adorning nearly every surface are wilting.

Sissy’s bubble is burst by the entry of 16-year-old Eshe (War of the Worlds’ Donna Banya), whose incessant knocking can’t be drowned out by the music. Eshe hasn’t been round for a while, we learn, and it’s initially easy to guess why. Where the teenager is quiet and subdued, if a little standoffish, Sissy cartwheels back and forth between intense anger and joy, with Kassarate’s performance never slipping into caricature. “It’s like I’m on this train with you,” Eshe explains. “There’s a different you in every carriage… and the speed of the train depends on the you in the carriage. I never know what you will be.”

The connection between Eshe and Sissy (whose exact relationship is only explained towards the play’s end) is complex. The show’s lightest moments stem from the fantasies Sissy enacts when she’s alone. In one, she pretends her pillow is her boyfriend, while popstar dreams are routinely imagined with a bottle as a microphone. When Eshe lets her guard down, that fun side comes out too, connecting them however briefly.

However, with a bond this deep, hurting each other feels inevitable. Race, class and sexuality are only mentioned in passing, but underpin the relationship between the relatives. Sissy can’t not pass her own trauma onto Eshe, a pain in Kassarate’s eyes every time she looks at the teenager. There’s violence here too – plates and bottles are thrown, fast-paced dialogue cuts – whether it’s aimed at each other or themselves. Think Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but in mid-Noughties Bethnal Green.

...cake is not a comfortable watch. The clammy environment serves as a pressure cooker that heightens emotions and distorts the senses. And as tensions rise, the lights on the wall sporadically flicker, music warps, and the smell of smoke lingers. There are ghostly voices too, Eshe and Sissy’s words repeated in a swirling soundscape they can’t take back. It’s claustrophobic and thrilling, an emotional reminder of the pain we inflict on those we love.

‘...cake’ runs at Theatre Peckham until 7 August