35 Cents. To 26 May.
London
35 CENTS
by Paul Anthony Morris
Blue Elephant Theatre 59a Bethwin Road/Thompson’s Avenue SE5 0XT To 26 May 2007
Tue-Sat 7.45pm
Runs 1hr 45min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7701 0100
www.blueelephanttheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 May
Fast-moving view behind the scenes in the Caribbean.
Talk about cultural variety. While Dalston’s Arcola takes us to Eastern Turkey, down in Camberwell the Blue Elephant’s presenting Crying in the Wilderness Theatre Company with Paul Anthony Morris’s play, which puts on display the poverty and struggle behind the rich tourist façade of sun-soaked Jamaica.
Morris does it in exuberant style, through the fivesome contingent of the No Confidence movement, with their Don’t Vote campaign at the island’s imminent elections (one of them’s son to the opposition leader, included in the No Confidence scenario as part of a rotten system). After a hard day’s energetic leafleting their energy levels swoop and they begin creating imaginary scenarios. At first, these are happy enough, mocking politicians and imagining them (a traditional political theatre device) in a TV quiz show; the title refers to a question asking how much of a dollar’s involved in debt repayment.
Things grow darker as they conjure up a sweatshop; the macabre outcome overlays a familiar picture of misery overcome by workers’ solidarity. This scene introduces the matter of foreign ownership. Soon the NCM are being identified as terrorists in press conferences by a foreign prime minister (Blairite speech patterns well caught) and president (Dubya deftly imitated in speech rhythms, swallowed syllables and furrowed face).
Morris catches both hope and gloom in his 20-years-after epilogue where a new generation of young activists are still at work: same complaint, different t-shirts, a character from the main action now a radical icon. His mix of fantasy and actual events allows the reality of youthful optimism to inform the range of situations on show; the piece works best as individual scenes, humorous, grim or grimly humorous.
It works too because of the skilled, quick-shifting character creations by its fine cast of five. Each manages the reality and pain of the sweated workers, the terror of sudden violence or the fast energy of TV razzamatazz and mocked politicians. And a production that combines a largely empty space plus basic modern clothing with an auditorium window opening onto daylight and the theatre’s air-conditioning, has a matching, if minimalist, bravura in its staging.
Ruth: Julie Hewlett
Madeline: Irma Inniss
Phillip: Vinta Morgan
James: Anthony Ofoegbu
Peter: Mo Sesay
Director: Paul Anthony Morris
Designer/Costume: Clary Salandy
Lighting: Giuseppe di Iorio
Composer: Carol Mae Whittick
2007-05-17 09:46:02