Kirsten Childs’ intelligent, quirky and hugely entertaining comedy this month heads to Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre 

On 15 September 1963, four girls were murdered in an infamous Ku Klux Klan terror attack in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing marked a major turning point in American racial politics, contributing to the passing of the Civil Rights Act the following year.

But not everyone was au fait with the movement at the time. A combination of fear, denial and internalised racism prevented many from reacting, at least openly, to the event. Among them is Kirsten Childs' semi-autobiographical heroine Viveca Stanton, the title character in her Offie Award-nominated musical, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin. Fully aware that any one of those dead girls might have been her, Viveca decides that she'll protect herself by ‘being white’. Assuming the unthreatening nickname ‘Bubbly’, she restyles herself as a giggling optimist floating through life, shielded from its harsh realities by relentlessly positive thinking. 

Following a run at London's Theatre Royal Stratford East, this intelligent, quirky and hugely entertaining comedy heads for Coventry's Belgrade Theatre this month.

“I think at a young age, Viveca is very sheltered,” says Karis Jack, who plays her, sharing the role with co-star Sophia Mackay. “She’s not necessarily aware of all the things that some of her school friends are aware of.” 

Partly, this is down to background and protective parenting. As a middle-class girl living in LA, Viveca doesn't witness the kind of direct violence that would have been a daily reality for many in the ’60s. Yet throughout her life, she's still subtly undermined by stereotyping and discrimination. Rather than confronting this head-on, however, her father encourages her to keep smiling and try to ignore what's happening. Her mother, on the other hand, is not convinced that's healthy.

“That conflict creates a dichotomy within the child,” explains Trevor A Toussaint, who plays Daddy.  “She starts wondering, 'Who am I? What's wrong with me aspiring to be like a white person? Why are black people telling me that I'm wrong?' I think the reason this show really resonates with people is because it's about that whole question of, 'Am I good enough?'”

In Act One, this dichotomy is represented through Viveca's conversations with her Chitty Chatty - a talking, white-skinned doll in a frilly dress with bright blue eyes and flowing blonde hair, which she favours over her short-haired black doll, dressed in a pair of red dungarees.

“As a young girl, Viveca aspires to be like Chitty Chatty,” says Jessica Pardoe, who brings the doll to life on stage. “It's actually based on a test that was done with children where they were given two dolls of different colours and asked which they preferred. There are recordings of these kids speaking really openly about it and it's quite shocking.”

Known as the Clark Test, this experiment was initially run in the late 1930s by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark. Regardless of their own race or background, the vast majority of children expressed a preference for the white doll, selecting it as “good” and “pretty” while the black doll was picked out as “bad” and “ugly”. The evidence this provided of internalised racism came to be used in the landmark 1954 Civil Rights case Brown v Board of Education, credited with ending segregation in American schools. Yet more than half a century later, repeat experiments have continued to show similar results, and not only in the US.

In Act Two, meanwhile, Viveca's internal conflict is physically depicted when Jack, who plays her as a child and teenager, joins the adult Viveca - as played by Mackay - on stage, representing the character's unspoken inner thoughts.

This isn't the only way Viveca changes over time. Spanning four decades of history, the show sees her try on multiple guises, from taking tips from her Black Panther schoolmate to hanging out with a crowd of hippies, and from working as a typist to giving big-shot directors what she thinks they want in dance auditions. And then there are the desperately inappropriate boyfriends...

“My character is a very different sort of person than Viveca has ever met before,” says Llandyll Gove, who plays the magnificently named Cosmic Rainbow. “It doesn't really matter to him who she is or what colour she is. But there's a really cringeworthy scene where he meets her mum. I suppose in his head, he's trying to be on their level and say the things that he thinks they would want to hear.”

“Lucas believes he is a sexy, smooth, charismatic guy who will get any lady he wants if he does his chat-up lines, and it works for him with Viveca,” says Ashley Joseph, who plays the self-styled lothario. “It's all based on something that his grandma told him when he was a kid, which he probably didn't fully understand at the time.”

In many respects, Lucas functions as a warped mirror image of Viveca, breezing through life responsibility-free, having constructed a persona that protects him from worrying about the world around him. This realisation is a big step towards Viveca’s eventual awakening.

“The important part of the title is that she sheds her chameleon skin,” says Jay Marsh, who plays her nice-guy next-door neighbour Gregory. “Everyone is a bit of a chameleon - you're different when you're with your friends to when you're at work. We all put up these fronts to be accepted.”

“It's very much about identity,” agrees Matt Dempsey, who plays the young Viveca's unconsciously racist old ballet teacher, as well as the slightly creepy Broadway doyen, Director Bob. “Yes, race is a very deep-rooted theme, and it’s Kirsten writing about what she felt, but that struggle with identity is something that we can all relate to.”

It's not just Viveca who changes with the times either. The show also features a fabulous and totally unique score that echoes pop trends through the decades, from ’60s Motown to ’80s power ballads.

“It's really interesting and not like anything I've ever done before, especially in terms of how it was put together,” says Shelley Williams, who plays Viveca's lighter-skinned ballet classmate Yolanda, as well as Lucas' “evil” Granny. “Kirsten didn't write notated music, so she recorded herself singing each line of the harmonies on different tape recorders, and then put them all together.”

“People who know their music will be able to hear how complex the harmonies are,” adds Gove, “and I think maybe someone who wrote music wouldn't have written them like that. It's quite challenging - sometimes every line could almost be a separate song.”

Above all, though, this is a show that's thoroughly good fun, underlined by a wicked sense of humour which emerges partly from the musical theatre conventions which Viveca's artificial cheeriness simultaneously exploits and subverts. It's also a classic coming-of-age tale, with all the usual comically clumsy awkwardness of adolescence.

“Despite the fact that it's so layered, and that's the beautiful thing about it, it still is a really fun night out,” says Williams. “There are some great numbers, great singing, and at the evening shows, we can hear the audiences laughing all the way through. People are going away having had an amazing time, and that's really important to us.”

The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin shows at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from Wednesday 5 to Saturday 15 April