ONE UNDER. To 5 March.

London

ONE UNDER
by Winsome Pinnock

Tricycle Theatre To 5 March 2005
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Sat 4pm & 2 March 2.30pm
BSL Signed 17 Feb
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7328 1000
www.tricycle.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 February

Underground drama that sometimes picks up speed, at others trundles along.The one is Sonny, and he's under a London underground train. One Under explores the lines that unravel back from his suicide, stirring guilt and loss in Sonny himself, his foster mother Nella, her other foster-child Zoe, plus laundrette-manager Christine, whom Sonny takes to a luxury hotel before his death and train-driver Cyrus who emotionally, and posthumously, adopts the young man he'd only met once by chance, as his son.

This is all carefully plotted and has some fascinating reflections; one of Winsome Pinnock's strengths is writing about characters who are essentially benevolent even Christine's daughter, borrowing a customer's stylish dry-cleaning to impress a bloke she's met for a brief lunchtime encounter, does it with cheery youthful innocence.

There's a sense of clutching for relationships in the way family links emerge, are paralleled through adoption or are imaginatively created, as there is in Sonny's instinctive sympathy with Christine, who's falling into the lowered esteem of solo middle-age.

The play's strongest when evoking or implying; the guilt behind Sonny's action is possibly linked to hitting something while driving (so finding fitting expiation by throwing himself in front of a hurtling train?). There's a momentary suggestion this could have been Christine's lost son.

But much of the play is more dogmatically expressed. At first, Pinnock intrigues with her various plot elements, but as the links emerge, thematic points appear with them, laid out in deliberate rows, with decreasing dramatic returns.

Despite a sterling cast Adie Allen and Lynn Farleigh especially creating women who are complex in their emotional needs and admirably restrained in expression Jennie Darnell's lacklustre production trundles on from scene to scene, losing impetus at each darkened shift of minimal scenery. Surely stage-craft has moved on since this was the price for meaningful plays from progressive small-scale touring companies a generation back?

And dynamic is what Pinnock's carefully plotted network of relationships desperately needs in production. At moments it explores characters' psychologies successfully, making the Underground a fitting metaphor for lives that crowd busily against each other yet remain isolated in their depths. But metaphors alone don't make theatre.

Mags: Louise Yates
Cyrus: Brian Bovell
Christine: Adie Allen
Sonny: Daon Broni
Aleysha: Sarah Ozeke
Ernest: Geoffrey Burton
Nella: Lynn Farleigh
Zoe: Doreene Blackstock

Director: Jennie Darnell
Designer: Matthew Wright
Lighting: Matthew Eagland
Sound: Fergus O' Hare

2005-02-10 12:33:07