★★★☆☆
BlacBrik returns to Manchester Opera House with a full-length production showcasing their deliciously slick funk fusion. Back in 2025, Nahum McLean & Darius Drooh’s ‘Death of The Bachelor’ duet at Ballet Nights enraptured audiences with its stylish, contagiously upbeat rhythmicality. The Brown Suite builds on their original concept, extending it with new characters and an over-arching storyline.
Based in 1970s New York, the show follows six friends united by their love of music in a vibrant nightclub, featuring the hits of James Brown with Sam Cooke and Etta James. Over the evening, the group pulls apart, divided by new feelings and one particularly explosive quarrel.
It opens (and closes) with an amusing sitcom reminiscent line-up before alternating between couples in short vignettes before the more cohesive soundscape and choreography of the club. Their unity at the club is breathtaking, the clunky transitional pauses dissolving with seamless music mixing and jaw-dropping synchronicity. Joshie Harriette’s staging and lighting really capture the performers’ contagiously energetic spirit, with vibrant pulsating spotlights, multi-coloured lightbars, flickering disco patterns, a rotatable DJ booth, and beaming stage-side rigs. Along with Maybelle Laye’s costumes, which are a broad assortment of colours and fabrics, the creative team heighten these enigmatic moments.
Like The Choir of Man, it emphasises that unity and freedom of expression celebrated in these communal spaces, although it too only scrapes the surface. The show’s main drawback is its insubstantial narrative. Despite visually striking choreographic sequences, I felt disconnected from the characters and disinterested in what would happen with their relationships. Like the dancers, the show’s plot gets lost in the music, with lots of palpable emotions, but nowhere to direct it with so little story progression.
Victor (McLean) and Angela (Monique Jonas) are a distant couple going through a rough spot, Denise (Leila Wright) and Marcus (Lukas Hunt) are a sizzling duo with intoxicating chemistry, Ray (Drooh) and Julian are endearingly swaggy, mischievous bachelors, and Mr New York (Hugo Bragg) is a pensive, starry-eyed cleaner and DJ.
The performers were captivating, each oozing with charisma while performing intricate routines with an effortless grace, but the same could not be said for their characters.
Aside from some surface-level character studies, wistful dream sequences, and the high-energy club scenes, the only real action is an adulterous flirtation leading to domestic violence. After a weirdly placed interval, Victor feels remorse for his actions and is shunned from his group… but it’s apparently inconsequential enough that one set of apologies allow him to be reluctantly readmitted. It’s as though the power of music nullifies his wrongdoings. Interesting framing, to say the least.
At its height, BlacBrik’s choreography is breathtakingly refreshing with dazzling fusions of the duo’s social dance, hip-hop, West African dance, and ballet roots, blurring the boundaries to create a new musically-driven genre. It’s both lively and accessible. Funky and elegant. Expressive and visually-stirring. It just needs some redirection to get the needle back into the groove.
The Brown Suite is currently touring the UK until November 20, returning in 2027 at Hackney Empire from May 19 to 22.
Check out our interview with Manchester’s own Nahum McLean, who co-created, directed and choreographed the show alongside San Francisco’s Darius Drooh, with whom he founded dance company BlacBrik.
