Dugsi Dayz

Royal Court (upstairs), 01/05/24

Credit: Cesare De Giglo

Final rating: ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Playing in the intimate Jerwood Theatre upstairs, Dugsi Dayz takes place in a mosque – and the room is well designed to emulate the look of one. One actor starts on the floor with headphones in as the audience take their seats, bopping along to 2010’s pop, which felt slightly jarring for some reason – a familiar theme throughout the show as scene transitions were awkwardly stumbled through with Natasha Bedingfield or TLC.

Written by Sabrina Ali – who is also in the cast herself – this play describes itself as a modern day interpretation of The Breakfast Club – and in that sense I think it delivers. Set in one location, four girls who are forced together grow to enjoy each other’s company as their personalities shine through. When a power cut occurs – introduced featuring some soft sound and lighting cues – they fetch torches and tell each other Somalian folk tales.

This all in principle sounds intriguing – packed into 70 minutes with no interval. However – I found myself bored at regular intervals – and it’s never a particularly good sign if I found myself wanting to check the time during a show as short as this. Sadly – the plot, and I use that term loosely – was just dull. And the ‘folk tales’ we were promised were just very goofy and clumsily told children’s stories with a moral message.

Of course, as a white man, I was not necessarily the intended audience and subsequently there were some cultural references and jokes that – understandably – didn’t land with me. And that’s totally okay. The playwright actually said in an interview with BBC Woman’s Hour that she didn’t view it as “her job” to educate white people on Somalian culture. Although it did enlighten me about what is viewed as ‘haram’, a joke that got increasingly funny as it was used.

That said, the ending’s ‘climax’ didn’t feel like any sort of pay off at all, and though the four actors did a good job at commanding the attention of the room, what they were doing wasn’t particularly interesting and the storyline was thin at best and disappointing or non existent at worst. It also got messy at times with people stepping on each other’s lines (first night nerves?) and actor’s knocking over chairs – which definitely wasn’t intentional.