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Latest items? Unedited? Fringe Report Uncut
ELECTRIC AVENUE
Verdict: Beating off the mask
Edinburgh - The Underbelly - August 02
Electric Avenue looks at the fraught question of race and difference in Britain during the late
20th century.
Steel's a resentful Black man, sweeping the floor of his Brixton shop and nursing memories of police brutality against his family. American Daryl Downs is Black too, but rich, successful,
and from another part of town. Her fiancé Whittier Cox is white and - oops! - a police officer. Niamh's a catholic from Belfast.
The scene is set - apparently - for the clashing of well-known, if not loved, symbols, and little revelation.
But the treat in store from this finely written, superbly acted vignette of alienation is what happens next. The stereotypes are broken rapidly as each character is revealed to be quite different from expectations. Steel and Whittier, for example, hail from Zimbabwe - the country from which the world turns away in embarrassment as Black Apartheid reveals its gun, knife and baton. Whittier is a good cop, who sees beneath the masks of intolerance to the zone where everyone has decency in common.
Masks are the both the subject and subtext of the play. Steel guards the death mask of his brother. Daryl is selling African masks at Sothebys. A mask runs through the play to its surprising climax. The mask is a metaphor too, as each character reveals her and his inner soul.
Daryl interrogates the male characters, revealing the surprises they nurse within. She searches within herself: her revelations are intense.
Niamh lifts the play to another plane. Her comparisons with the unresolved strife between Ireland and its neighbour and within Ireland itself raise a profound point - predating, as they do, even the Black diaspora of slavery.
Daryl Downs is played with mastery, depth, sincerity and insight by Donna Duplantier. Orran Farmer gives Steel authority and power, skilfully exposing the range of facets of this remarkable character. Whittier Cox is portrayed blissfuly by Montgomery Maguire, showing a fine control within the complexity of a man who sees to the heart. Marion Wood is a graceful delight as Niamh, investing an intriguing character with warmth, beauty, elegance and wit.
Director - Edward Vilga. Producer - Leslie Lewis Sword. Writer - Rosalie O'Brien. Technicals - Underbelly staff.
END
John Park
reviewed 18 August 02 / Underbelly
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2012
www.fringereport.com
