The legends of them: an epic biographical journey into the life of a mythic artist.
The Legends of Them cannot leave you indifferent. More of theatrical self-portrait rather than an actual biography, Satara Gayle AKA Lorna Gee visits multiple genres, uses various storytelling structures and plays with a diversity of tones to deliver the portrait of a truly unique artist. It doesn’t matter if you heard of her beforehand or not, you will discover an authentic performer and understand her well-deserved status of an icon. If I’m being honest, I am fairly ignorant when it comes to reggae culture, and I had in fact never heard of Lorna Gee before. It’s going to be hard to unhear her from now on.
First and foremost: what a life! The show depicts a woman who seems to have gone through several lives in one. Chapter after chapter, one memory after the other, Lorna shares snippets of her life story, not necessarily chronologically. We therefore discover her family background and the education she received from a mother working very hard to fulfill her family’s needs; her difficult times at school before being place under a care order; her time in prison when she hears herself for the first time on the radio, her fight against the highly patriarchal/misogynistic musical industry of the eighties; and of course the death of her sister, shot by the police, which then sparked the uprising in Brixton in 1985. What a life, indeed! And no matter what life threw at her, it never impacted her determination to embrace her burning passion for music, she had this aim in life and despite all the obstacles, she made straight for it. How admirable! How inspiring!
As a performer, Lorna Gee is mesmerizing. I won’t lie, reggae is not my cup of tea, and yet the musical numbers in this show are phenomenal, in particular in the opening. From the get go, she burns the stage with a contagious energy and immediately catch her audience. Unreal. She jumps in and out of her musical numbers with ease, it’s a pleasure to watch. In the scenes, in which she embodies the multitude of characters populating her life, she’s good and manages to share her vulnerability with poesy and humor.
Apart from the gigantic sound system in the background very cleverly used, the set is extremely simple which avoid distraction, sure, but it’s so basic and rudimentary that it’s at times hard to visualize the world she creates since, visually, nothing really changes. Unsure of where we are, it doesn’t necessarily help a narration sometimes structurally already unclear.
The lack of chronology is interesting in the sense that the show is more like opening windows on specific instants of her life, but it also makes it difficult to follow at times, specifically considering that she plays every single character on her own. I felt a bit confused here and there, and I do think that more visual spacial changes or clearer contextualization would have allowed me to connect with her memories quicker. Besides, the show’s present time is her spiritual retreat with her brother whose reflection pull the whole show together. If you can definitely feel and understand how important it is for Gee to share that with the audience, the whole “nothing exists except for here and now” message is a bit predictable, even though coherent with her letting go of her past. And as it is at times a bit on-the-nose, it sometimes flirts with a preachy tone that highlights the whole concept of the show in a too direct and easy way to my taste.
That being said, Lorna Gee created an inspiring, moving and vibrant show in which she obviously put her whole heart in with great generosity. And when she ends up gloriously standing at the top of her sound system like the warrior that she is, it’s hard not to acclaim The Legends of Them.