Mullings's 'A to B': Two Voices Map a Blind Date
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- "A to B" is Tia-Renee Mullings's coming-of-age play that follows a blind date set up by mutual friends, told entirely through two separate, overlapping monologues
- Brianna (Zakiyyah Dean) narrates her side of the evening while her sisters destroy her chosen outfit and water guns ruin her hair, and Armani (Sheyi Cole) recounts his parallel disaster of missing his barber appointment and getting the worst trim of his life
- The play runs 80 minutes with time-stamps flashing on a screen to mark the passing of the day
- Director Ewa Dina stages lyrical spoken-word passages and rhythmic exchanges that draw on British Jamaican life in south London
- The review praises flickers of emotional depth — Dean revealing Brianna as someone "lost in a forest" eager to be loved, and Cole's Armani daring to hope his date will see past his imperfect image
- The reviewer argues that the relentless string of mishaps becomes predictable and the play feels like it's "running in circles" before delivering the deeper story it sets up
Why it matters: For programmers seeking new Black British voices on stage, "A to B" offers culturally specific spoken-word textures and committed performances from Dean and Cole, but its 80-minute mishap-driven structure dilutes the romantic premise the writing clearly wants to be taken seriously as.
