Traplord, Ivan Michael Blackstock Review 4*
Traplord, Ivan Michael Blackstock’s award-winning exploration of Black masculinity, had a welcome revival run at Sadler’s Wells East
An intricate mix of dance, music, the spoken word, video game, scenic design and a little posturing, Traplord is impossible to categorise. Its purpose, however, is absolutely clear: it’s an exploration of black masculinity and the challenges faced by Black British men in a society perceived as hostile and often emasculating.
Ivan Michael Blackstock is variously described as multidisciplinary creative, artist and mentor; all that is apt, but I think ‘cultural innovator’ suits him best. What’s new about Traplord is not that it explores Black masculinity – other Black artists have done, and continue to do so – but the original way in which, as director and choreographer, he does it.
Traplord’s structure is that of a disjointed kaleidoscope, whose constantly shifting forming and reforming images are always fractured, never pretty, but have the cumulative effect of ramming home the message of a confusing, threatened, often violent existence – life lived in the hyper-reality of video games.
Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting design is simply brilliant: from the disquieting spotlights that roam over the audience at intervals, to the blue semi-darkness in which the performers stalk the stage and the unexpected flame red framing of a particular scene, it always adds to a powerfully immersive effect.
Ivan Michael Blackstock, TRAPLORD, Image: Camilla Greenwell
Dogs bark menacingly even as distant sirens come closer, providing an unmistakable context to those roaming spotlights in the complex sound design by Luke Swaffield for Autograph; soon loud pounding music, the kind that vibrates inside the audience’s own bodies, takes over.
And then you have Ian William Galloway’s videos establishing Traplord as a part-video game – it, too, menacing at times, but culminating in a spectacular brighly coloured sequence of ‘the hero’ running through buildings on fire into a lush, peaceful mountainside.
Following a run at 180 Studios, Traplord won the 2023 Olivier Award for Best Dance Production; but bar a few well-placed sequences of vigorous hip hop, dance doesn’t take pride of place in this show, even if all nine performers – one of which is later revealed as a woman – are great movers with a compelling stage presence.
Ophelia Nunes-Wickham performs a powerful duet with her own distorted video image; the seemingly boneless Kanah Flex justifies his name as his limbs are cruelly manipulated into ever more impossible shapes – the symbolism of that couldn’t be clearer.
The spoken word is key, either through voice over, straightforward on-stage narrative or rap, peppered with words such as ‘slavery’, ‘fear’, ‘courage’, ‘absent fathers’ and the n-word.
There is humour, too, and an unexpected turn when a description of a violent bank heist turns effortlessly into the story of how the speaker met, courted and married his wife.
Traplord is that rare thing: an extraordinarily polished production that nevertheless keeps the raw edge of street life. At times it amounts almost to over-stimulation and not all of it resounds as it might; but it remains a powerful, unflinching look at lives blighted by exclusion.
© Teresa Guerreiro
(Banner image credit: Ivan Michael Blackstock, TRAPLORD, Image: Camilla Greenwell)
Traplord was at Sadler’s Wells East 28 – 31 May 2025.