This study continues the author's accomplished work on black British theatre – see Staging Black Feminisms (2007) and the recently co-edited Modern and Contemporary Black British Drama (2015) – and updates debates already raised in two edited collections from 2006, Dimple Godiwala's Alternatives within the Mainstream (2006) and Geoffrey Davis and Anne Fuchs's Staging New Britain (2006).

Focusing on four prominent dramatists in the field – Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah, debbie tucker green and Bola Agbaje – Goddard examines the practice of black British playwriting in the early twenty-first century, and how it responds to pressing social and political matters. This leads to well-contextualized and finely nuanced readings against the backdrop of the playwrights’ increased visibility on London mainstream stages from the turn of the millennium to 2013. Playhouses include the Royal Court, the National Theatre and those in the West End, but also the Tricycle Theatre in North London, an important if slightly ‘off-mainstream’ space with a recognized history of staging black plays. Goddard appreciates the growing prominence of black British playwriting, but she is also concerned how this ‘commercialisation and mainstreaming’ (p. 6) might affect what is being told onstage, and how. Does writing for what she describes as ‘dual audiences’ (p. 11) – white middle-class theatre-goers and new black spectators, largely young and working-class – necessitate writerly compromise? Do playwrights gradually acquiesce to stereotypes of the black British experience? And does the prospect of productions in largely white-managed spaces affect the themes, reception and sociopolitical impact of these plays?

In seven chapters, Goddard embarks on answering these questions. Each of the above playwrights is read thematically, in a combination of textual, performance and reception analysis, always against the backdrop of multiracial Britain's current concerns, social theory and occasionally her own teaching experience. Williams is looked at in terms of black masculinity, youth violence (chapter 2), racism and nation (chapter 5); tucker green is read for women's solidarity (chapter 4) and African/Caribbean human rights (chapter 6), Kwei-Armah for the impact of slavery on modern British lives (chapter 3), and Agbaje for her mapping of third-generation black experience in urban London (chapter 7). Chapter 8 discusses recent productions and developments at the Tricycle. Rather than the idea of a monolithic black British theatre, what emerges is a plethora of voices and styles, not all of which are in sync or immediately accessible to the author, a black British Londoner herself. There are differences not only in communities, backgrounds and generations, but also in aesthetics and linguistic registers. Above all, there is no single answer to the questions above. And yet all of these plays share an important point: they examine questions about aspects of the black experience, while staging them as an integral – ‘“universal’” (p. 17) – part of British society and the wider world. One way or the other, these plays concern all of us, no matter what class, creed, nationality or colour.

While the book is occasionally relentless in its emphasis on sociological issues, and drama as ‘social documents’ (p. 207), Goddard's approach holds enormous appeal for those trying to comprehend the precariousness of black British theatre today, despite the success of a selected few. A great number of black playwrights and practitioners are still not seen on so-called mainstream stages, and even productions of better-known dramatists have returned to smaller spaces since 2013. In the light of an increasing number of black artists trying to find greener pastures in the United States – Kwei-Armah amongst them – it is clear that despite the post-millennial developments all is not well with the state of UK theatre, especially for practitioners from various black communities. Goddard's study is therefore an important, and timely, contribution to better understanding an evidently vibrant aspect of contemporary British theatre arts – that of black playwriting – which calls for continuous vigorous attention.