The Legends of Them review – reggae singer’s painful past and spiritual succour

Sutara Gayle, also known as Lorna Gee, is a singer and actor who started out as a pioneering reggae artist in a male-dominated scene. She is also the sister of Cherry Groce, whose wrongful shooting by the Metropolitan police sparked the Brixton riots of 1985. This elliptical monologue deals with both her musical identity and family story, bringing some powerful moments in the melding of sound and story.

Co-created by Gayle and Jo McInnes (the latter also directs), and first performed at Brixton House last year, it combines song with spoken thoughts, conversations and painful reflections but is not without humour. In a production that is part monologue and part experimental gig, the stage feels slightly too empty with just a table and chairs, along with exposed theatre spotlights and a back-screen (projection design by Tyler Forward and Daniel Batters).

Gayle simply stands, or sits, with a handheld microphone, but has real presence and you are held by the story of her past. She gives us only snatches of it, and it is like a pointillist picture, made up of disconnected flashes of memories.

It begins with the darker elements of her music career, including drugs, and follows with slivers of a childhood in which her mother worked numerous jobs to make ends meet; she plays both her child self and her mother. There are expulsions from school, banishment to the countryside for her education, where she is the only Black child. There is stealing too, a spell in Holloway Prison, telling her church-going mother she is a lesbian, and briefly captured accounts that sound like male sexual assault.

The harrowing details around the shooting of her sister are accompanied by news reports and documentary footage. A trip to India hangs in the air and seems transformative. An omniscient male voice speaks certain wisdoms: it might be her brother, a guru figure, or even a therapist. The show certainly appears to have a therapeutic edge, of an inner journey taking place – Lorna grows into Sutara – but it does not quite become a full arc.

Elena Peña’s sound design roves across it all and the fractures between – and even within – the memories seem deliberate. There are more questions raised than answered. It is intriguing, gripping and frustratingly bitty. You want more than Gayle is willing to give.

• At Royal Court, London, until 21 December