YOURS ABUNDANTLY, FROM ZIMBABWE. To 18 October.

London.

YOURS ABUNDANTLY, FROM ZIMBABWE
by Gillian Plowman.

Oval House (Downstairs Theatre) To 18 October 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 18 Oct 3pm.
Runs 1hr 20min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 7582 7680.
www.ovalhouse.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 October.

Dispatches from an earthly hell.
As the Zimbabwean regime turns the country into a concentration camp, its people becoming perpetrators of near-arbitrary violence or victims, starved and beaten beyond belief in a supposed democracy, it seems almost irresponsible that Gillian Plowman’s crisis-ridden central character is White Englishwoman, Nell Porter.

But maybe that’s the point. While we have the luxury of anxiety, there’s an abiding – abundant – hope abroad, which attracts Nell, as Gillian Wright shows from the opening moments.

She uses her widowed wealth to help young Zimbabweans get an education. There are school fees for basic education, plus money for books and equipment. Meanwhile, her journalist daughter Georgia, disdainful and greedy in the luxury of her London life, is a two-dimensional hate-figure, her remorseless selfishness played with cruel accuracy by Hannah Boyde, though Georgia gives several plausible reasons for her self-serving motives.

As she wraps the dinner-service, determined to get something from her mother, Nell plans to return to Zimbabwe as a teaching assistant. Eventually she goes as a teacher, and despite being White survives where a Black headteacher has not.

The letters sent her from Zimbabwe are the heart of the play. Even the few years between their being written (in reality, to Plowman herself) have seen serious deterioration as children lack the food, energy or money to attend school, while most teachers have given up, not having received even their meagre pay in the mega-thousand percent inflation economy.

Though it’s impossible to separate the contributions of co-directors Annie Castledine and Ben Evans, there’s Castledine’s stamp in the free-flowing action, its movement outlining the play’s world as the Zimbabweans watch in the background while the English women argue, or move around the stage relating their stories, before being dispatched fatefully to the side.

There’s a ‘pin-drop’ speech from Aicha Kossoko as the headteacher’s wife, ending in a sudden gesture summarising her own fate, while Iona McLeish’s bare set, the English scenes set on a horizontal disc, in a different world from the tilted disc around, makes its own point. As does Ben Payne’s lighting, fading to leave the final words spoken in the dark.

Nell Porter: Gillian Wright.
Georgia Potter: Hannah Boyde.
Boniface Masunda: Nicholas Beveney.
Violet Masunda: Aicha Kossoko.
Enock Tinago: Tonderai Munyevu.
Wilson Mutambira: Denton Chikura.
Portia Mutumbira: Diane Meyer.
Pertunia Mutumbira: Ayo-Dele Ajana.

Directors: Annie Castledine, Ben Evans.
Designer: Iona McLeish.
Lighting: Ben Payne.
Sound: Andrew Pontzen.
Movement: Annabel Arden.

2008-10-12 12:27:22