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Seize The Day is the brand new play written and directed by renowned actor and playwright
Kwame Kwei-Armah, now showing at the Tricycle Theatre as part of their ‘Not Black And White’ season – three pieces reflecting on the state of contemporary Britain.
Jeremy Charles, played by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, is upwardly-mobile young London personified. With his respectable, English wife and plush house, he’s enjoying newfound success as a Reality TV star, off the back of a The Apprentice-style show. He is in demand for everything from autographs to presenting work. One day, whilst filming a report he intervenes in a scuffle involving some young Afro-Caribbean men; when one of them, Lavelle (Aml Ameen), threatens to stab Jeremy he knocks him unconscious. The whole incident is caught on camera and thanks to YouTube Jeremy’s popularity gets a further boost.
Ghanaian-born, British actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is fast establishing himself as one of the UK’s most versatile young thespians. Chances are that over the past couple of years you would have caught at least one of his many TV and theatre appearances. Be it as part of the ensemble cast of the BBC’s sophisticated one-for-the-kids comedy sketch show Sorry, I’ve Got No Head, impersonating Kofi Annan on ‘Star Stories’ or starring as Jeremy Charles, the ambitious mayoral candidate with a slight messiah-complex in Kwame-Kwei Armah’s play Seize the Day - Kobna is popping up everywhere.
Taking a break from rehearsals for his new play at the Young Vic (August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone), an eloquent and measured Kobna chats to SoulCulture in the theatre’s sunlit bar overlooking London Waterloo.