About Elephant
Thursday 12th June 2025
A couple of days ago, I managed to catch up with Anoushka Lucas’s Elephant, which was first staged as an hour-long monologue at the Bush in 2022. Written, composed and performed by the musician and actor herself, this debut semi-autobiographical play with piano has now been slightly enlarged to 80 minutes. Lucas plays Lylah, the working-class but well-spoken daughter of an Anglo-Indian father and a French Cameroonian mother, and explores her racial identity and heritage while also celebrating her love of music, both classical and jazz, in a piece that features her songs. At the centre of the play is an onstage piano, and Lylah explains how some of these instruments are made from mahogany — imported from the Caribbean — and then protests against the horrific fact that ivory keys require the violent removal of elephant tusks. The easiest way to get them is to kill the animal. Not only does she evoke the wonder of the elephant, but she also demonstrates how such a common instrument as the piano is implicated in the history of colonialism. And the real elephant in the room, in the circles she moves in, is race. At the same time, she also sketches out an often humorous life story, playing the young Lylah who is entranced by the magic of music, as well as by the difficulties of learning to play. This is punctuated by her mother, whose strong character makes itself felt in this monologue of several voices. The story moves effortlessly from her scholarship at a posh lycée, where her skin colour marks her out, to her love affair with a white middle-class drummer, and her meetings with record company executives (they want her to be less like a “good girl“, and more street). Lucas illustrates how her physical appearance and posh manners are both attractive and a handicap, encouraging various levels of condescension. How a mixed heritage forces her to actively seek answers to questions of personal identity. And how a love of music is a gift you can share with others. This restaging by Jess Edwards has some lively direction, making good use of designer Georgia Wilmot’s revolving sunken pit, piano and bookshelf. Mixing optimism and pessimism, fun and rage, Elephant is both provocative and beguiling. Constantly surprising, constantly challenging our assumptions and constantly focused, it is, by the end, a deeply moving show.
© Aleks Sierz
- Elephant is at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 29 June.
