The meaning pf true success
FABULATION
The Tricycle Theatre
ONE of Camden’s Poems on the Underground founders Gerard Benson once likened theatre critics to donkeys in an illustrated book of verse inspired by Saint Saens Carnival of Animals.
“They scribble notes in scruffy pads, and when the band begins to play, they waggle those stupendous ears, open their mouths and bray.”
The return of Fabulation to The Tricycle theatre had the assess eeyoring with delight. The spontaneous, semi-standing ovation was telling, for this mule.
The Tricycle’s “tribunal” plays – spanning Bloody Sunday, Stephen Lawrence and Guantanamo and the Iraq War – won political plaudits and the theatre’s commitment to black writing and the local schools has created a formidable almost righteous legacy. New scripts arriving in the Kilburn playhouse must stand on the shoulders of giants.
But the theatre’s productions have this remarkable knack of exceeding expectation. And although Brooklyn-born playwright Lynn Nottage – with a relatively anonymous bibliography – fools around with racial and social stereotype, and at times on shaky political ground, her script is right up there with the best of them.
Nottage’s central character Undine (Jenny Jules) is a black entrepreneur who breaks free from her Brooklyn mould, reinventing herself as a cutthroat executive in the Manhattan fast lane, only to be dragged kicking and screaming back into what feels like her “place”.
Jenny Jules – with her asides and adrenalin – was nothing short of superb. Her acting masterclass transformed Nottage’s ostensibly earnest plot into something meaningful and, best of all, fun. She shows us, with grit, that love and family is the only success. It gave me the tingles.
But this was far from a one-woman show. Jones was the only actor to play a single role.
The others doubled and trebled as a host of convincing parts, often walking off stage as one character and coming in through a different door as another.
This can feel duplicitous and confusing – the photosynthesis was seamless throughout.
A special mention must go to Karl Collins who played the Argentinean love-rat Herve and the saintly reformed drug-addict Guy. I have never seen an actor walk on stage and repeat three unrelated words to such effect. His portrayal of the velvet creep was devastating.
Until October 21
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