Elephant – Thursday 26th June 2025

This one woman show was gentle, and enjoyable. The best thing about it were the songs; sadly, there weren’t enough of them.

Anoushka Lucas tells an autobiographical story about being a mixed-race girl, going to a posh private school, and living in a posh part of London, yet feeling like an outsider. She regales the audience with songs and stories about her struggles in the music industry as well as her romantic relationships, dating posh white guys.

None of that had any resonance with me. It’s so trendy to play the victim nowadays; everyone has a sob story that they absolutely MUST share with the world (to get social credit or something. I dunno; it’s just nonsense).

I’ve lived in London my entire life, and black people are not marginalized, they’re the mainstream! In every school in town, the most popular kid in school is going to be a black kid. There’s no ‘white majority’ schools left, so no one is going to victimize you for being black or mixed race, especially if you happen to be a gorgeous looking girl! Besides, white people and black people love one another, which is why there are so many mixed-race relationships in the first place! Also, if you’re surrounded by posh people and date posh people, that’s a choice, and most likely, you’re posh too!

So none of her story rang true for me; it seemed like it was made to tug at the heart strings of other posh people, or this being theatre, catered for a middle class white audience. That’s fair enough; those are the people that decide what shows get put on, and those are the people that predominantly go to the theatre, so you have to play that game if you want your work to be seen.

So yeah, the songs were great; the story? Not for me.