This interactive Doctor Who show is as bombastic, fey and tedious as the TV series

Death of a Black Man is a little-known script from the 1970s written by Alfred Fagon who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1986, aged 49. It’s an intriguing but sloppily written play set in 1973 about a pair of black London teenagers who are hustling for cash in the music business and the furniture trade.

Shakie has lucked his way into a Chelsea flat where he makes money flogging African chairs to gullible Americans. His best friend, Stumpie, needs a loan to bring a band of African drummers to the UK. Meanwhile Shakie’s ex-girlfriend, Jackie, has returned from Jamaica to sponge off him and enjoy the high life. Scriptwriting blunders abound. Fagon uses soliloquys to reveal motivation. ‘I wonder who owns this flat,’ says Jackie to herself. When Stumpie arrives, he enters through an unlocked front door. (No one leaves their front door unlocked.) Characters reminisce about the past in order to spoon-feed information to the audience. Clunky telephone calls are used for exposition. ‘Bryan? You’ve got 40 chairs for sale?’

Fagon writes long screeds of meandering dialogue just to keep the action going while a character exits the stage to change costume or to attend a business meeting. Clearly the writer had little theatrical expertise and he created another problem by making his main characters just 18 years old. Performers of that age are rarely skilled or experienced enough to carry a full-length drama. The director, Dawn Walton, has wisely cast older actors in these roles but some of the psychological dynamics are lost.

The play is full of fascinating ideas. Shakie is a charming, greedy cynic who exploits the mystique of Africa by selling ‘ethnic furniture’ (actually made in Yorkshire) to beatnik tourists on the King’s Road.