Expensive Shit

We're all in the shit; it’s only the depth that changes. Isn’t that how the saying goes? Well Tolu’s up to her eyes. Adura Onashile’s play flicks between Tolu’s two lives, first as a dancer in Fela Kuti's famous Shrine club in Lagos, then as a toilet attendant in a Scottish nightclub. But shit is shit, and Onashile shows that there’s not much difference between these two worlds. 

The script itself is meagre, and could do with a bit more character and context in both the Nigeria and the Glasgow scenes. But the long dance routines to Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat music don't feel like unnecessary padding. Watching the careful choreography played out in full is part of establishing how bloody tiring life at the Shrine must have been, how much it takes over these dancers' lives, and all for the scant possibility of being noticed by Fela himself. 

For Tolu the situation in both chapters of her life is sort of impossible. If she speaks out against sexual exploitation she loses her livelihood in Lagos. If she speaks out against the perversion of voyeurism in the Glasgow toilet, she loses her job over here. 

Sabina Cameron finds complexity in Tolu’s character. Her sweetness to toilet users at the beginning turns out to have quite a sinister motive, and the audience take the role of voyeurs behind one-way glass. 

Although thin as a whole, Onashile’s play is a fierce warning that nothing—not even shit—comes without a price.