When actor Charity Bedu-Addo first read the script for “Shifters” — an intimate, Black romance conceptualized by playwright Benedict Lombe and director Lynette Linton — she knew something significant had landed in her hands.
“I couldn’t put it down,” Bedu-Addo said of her initial encounter with the play ahead of its original 2024 run on London’s West End. Starting off as an understudy, Bedu-Addo now plays the female lead in an across-the-pond adaption of the Laurence Olivier Award-nominated play. “I went all the way home. I’m literally crossing traffic, couldn’t put it down. Read it all that night,” she said.
Audiences have felt similar. For the last two years, the story has entranced showgoers with its heartbreaking portrayal of an imperfect love story. Bestselling authors, fervent theater-goers, and culture critics alike have all heralded the production as a special chapter in the canon of Black theater. Now, in New York, it’s common to see an audience of young and mostly Black and POC millennials exit the Cherry Lane Theatre, filled with emotion as they dissect the play on their way out. It’s refreshing to overhear how the play instantly resonates, how one’s own fears and hopes about life and love were just reflected back at them.
