Growing up in Dudley, West Midlands in the mid-1970s was no picnic. Despite an obvious talent for mimicry, Danny (Kascion Franklin) has to cope with almost daily racist insults as well as sporadic attacks of bullying from the local skin-heads. The only way he can cope with life is to mooch around with his mates in Dudley Zoo or the castle.
Such is the basic scenario for Lenny Henry's comedy-drama, based loosely on his own life. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he has been brought up to respect his mother (Cecilia Noble) and to tolerate his father (Lenny Henry) who seems much more interested in watching cricket than fulfilling a parental role. The story follows a familiar rags-to-riches path with Danny winning a local talent show, passing the auditions for the television talent program NEW FACES, and then coming third in the grand final. As a result he is offered a contract for a summer season by impresario James Broughton (Richard Wilson) to join the Black and White Minstrels for a summer season in Blackpool. However, life as an African-Caribbean in an black-face troupe proves not quite what Danny envisaged.
Destiny Ekaragha's production contains some telling flashbacks, revealing Danny's state of mind. His brother-in-law Larrington (Peter Bankole) keeps appearing to remind Danny that he is somehow not a "true" family member. By avoiding a nine-to-five job and looking for success on television, he has transformed himself into an outcast, someone reluctant to pursue the nine-to-five live in local factories. Yet the production asks to reflect on who exactly Danny's family are - in a telling sequence set in a local club, he discovers an unsavory truth about his mother's past.
As an entertainer, Danny is obviously extremely talented, yet through his mimicry of familiar television figures of the time - Bruce Forsyth, Tommy Cooper, and Muhammad Ali - we are left to reflect on whether Danny himself is not doing precisely the same thing: mimicking what the white majority expect of a comedian to ensure success. The regular joke about his performing impressions "in color" makes the point. In the end he realizes that has to cultivate a stage persona based on his own identity, not on a false identity imposed on him.
Shot throughout in washed-out color redolent of the Seventies, DANNY AND THE HUMAN ZOO contains some comic moments, yet reminds us of the enduring current of racism that still permeates mainstream British society. African-Caribbeans are no longer be the butt of such insults; it is the Syrians, Afghans, and others from the Middle Eastern regions that have to suffer. There are one or two unconvincingly staged moments: for example, the Black and White Minstrel Show, which looks as if it is being staged in a small provincial theater rather than one of the main provincial stages on Britain's No. 1 touring circuit in Blackpool. But perhaps we can forgive the odd awkward moment in a thoroughly entertaining and pertinent piece.
