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Diva's downfall is merely watchable
FABULATION
Tricycle Theatre
WE all love a good downfall, the lower and harder the better.
Black New York PR diva Undine takes a tumble so comprehensive
you wonder how someone so hard-nosed could have been so gullible.
Suffice to say, she is utterly ruined by her greedy husband
and, as the smart Manhattan set deserts her, she is forced to
return to her impoverished Brooklyn family.
It’s an awkward reunion. Fourteen years earlier she told
a magazine interviewer her entire family were wiped out in a
fire. They knew she knew she was lying. She never looked back.
They never forgave her.
The play mingles this fish-out-of-water comedy with a don’t-forget-your-roots
message. However, what it inadvertently illustrates is that
sometimes “roots,” like those of a peroxide blonde,
can be rather embarrassing and revealing. The hapless Undine
(Jenny Jules) could hardly be blamed for abandoning her chaotic
family, losing it in the dole queue and visiting her slimy Latino
ex-husband in jail.
I was really looking forward to this play as the Tricycle’s
African-American season has to date been sparing, witty and
powerful. But Jules overplays here, grasping and lunging like
a strange caricature. Where is this immaculately coiffed, arrogant,
suspicious yuppie of the posters? I imagined Undine as an unforgiving
bitch queen, instead her bandy ankles, too-big for her shoes,
featureless black dress and apologetic ponytail made me feel
sorry for her.
It’s very funny in places, but the laughs belong to the
other cast members. Clare Perkins is a stunning character actress
playing welfare jobsworth, mother and prostitute with a potent
mix of venom and pathos. Sharon Duncan-Brewster also flits through
several characters with comic aplomb. Carmen Munroe is wonderful
as the heroin-addicted granny and ably supported by Don Gilet,
Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Lucian Msamati Claire Lams and Nathan
Osgood.
Writer Lynn Nottage has been festooned with awards for this
play, which is well-crafted and would make a splendid film.
Yet it is hardly original, having the quality of a very good
episode of Dallas without the glamour – I want to know
what happens next but that’s the only thing that keeps
me interested. Watchable but not overwhelming.
Until March 18
020 7328 1000
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