SUS, Barrie Keeffe’s incendiary play about institutional racism and abuse of power to get timely revival at Park Theatre.
Set on the eve of Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1979, Barrie Keeffe’s play about a young Black man detained and brutalised by the police for a crime he has no knowledge of is a powerful dramatisation of a true story.
Originally staged in 1979, it shows audiences a shocking depiction of institutional racism through the eyes of Delroy, who has been brought to a South London police station on what he thinks is SUS – suspect under suspicion – the law now commonly known as Stop and Search. Unbeknownst to him, two white male police detectives are tasked with drawing a confession for an unspeakable crime, and they go about it in the most brutal of ways.
Dilated Theatre Company staged the play in 2013 at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, and return to the show for a timely revival. It was originally staged at Theatre Royal Stratford East, and made into a film with Rafe Spall in 2010.
Director Paul Tomlinson said, “SUS was the fourth production I directed of Barrie’s plays. It’s an intensely powerful play, as relevant now as when it was first written. It is with particular poignancy that I embark on this directorial revival, having lost Barrie in late 2019. It was the end of not only a forty year friendship, but also a strong working relationship founded on mutual respect, trust, political viewpoints and creative styles. That said, there is no greater homage we can pay to great writers than to allow their work to live on.”
SUS is at Park Theatre 21st September – 15th October 2022.
