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