The tricycle is wonderful. Comprised of a theater, a cinema, a small gallery and a bar/coffee shop/restaurant. It has lots of interesting shows and events. Make sure you arrive early so you can try the amazing apple cake. Tickets for the cinema cost around £7, the theater around £15. However they have offers for students and Brent residents which you can find on their website www.tricycle.co.uk.

Fabulations

The Tricycle Theatre is like Kilburn’s little treasure, tucked away on the urban Kilburn High Road I would never have guessed a theatre as such existed. And as unconventional as its location us the interior of the Theatre, set out with bicycle parts and iron flooring leading me to the box office. The theatre exudes a comforting and welcoming feel to the drama theatre world, with its unreserved seating policy and comfortable huge cushioned seats I didn’t feel as though I was entering an elitist world.

This was also reflected in the audience; a truly well rounded completely mainstream audience, there wasn’t a predominant demographic, from black, Asian and white, American to English, male and female and a completely diverse age range. I must honestly admit that I had my preconceived ideas about a Black Female play, I concluded the issues must be deep rooted and the play heavy. I had hoped that Lynn Nottage would prove me wrong and the general feeling I had accumulated so far made me feel that she would, leaving me more confident and excited about the play I was about to review.

On the stage sat a very minimalist set consisting of white floors and a single white wall in which all the action took place in front of. The white wall also acted as a light box, certain sections of the wall occasionally lit up, the wall also had an opening in the left hand corner which acted as a doorway. The cast would often, instead of disappearing off stage using the wings would slip off behind the wall and would appear on stage the same way, this acted as a benefit for those cast member who had quick changes, particularly with the doubling up of characters. The white walls and floors encased locations such as an office, a front room, the streets of Brooklyn, a substance abusers meeting, a hospital, a pharmacy, a jail cell, a prison inmates visitors room, it was clearly important that the set remain minimal in order to be adaptable for the many locations the play was placed in. Often the lighting and sound aided in following through with the story lines, most locations consisted of simply a plain very bright lighting pattern, however the appearance of Herve was often complimented with a fiery red/orange which complimented his Latino passion or the low lights of the Brooklyn streets at night, the flashing blue lights and the sound of the siren from the police car we don’t see and the sound of the buzzing streets and traffic we hear when located in Brooklyn.

The play opens, inviting us into the office of Undine Barnes, Boutique Public Relations. Downstage right sits a black leather office chair, a desk with a laptop, a telephone and scattered papers on it. At the desk sits a young black woman, yapping away on a call, however instead of talking into a handset she talks with a Bluetooth earpiece clipped onto her ear and almost yaps into space. We so often see people walking down the street or in the supermarket appearing stir crazy talking to themselves, only to realize that it’s the modernity of technology. And this is exactly what the play oozes with – modernity; The sets bright lights, the lap top, blue tooth earpiece and the manifestation of modernity itself; Undine. Undine the young, sexy meets classy, powerful, successful upwardly mobile black woman, concerned with her career, her status and social class, making her riches from - how ironical – Public Relations, a woman who lied about her family dying in a fire in order to save her own relationship with the public.
Jenny Jules embodies Undine as a dramatic, extreme and neurotic woman, who possesses some eccentricities, which is I believe as Nottage would have intended her to be. The story in itself is extremely melodramatic, Nottage introduces us to a riches to rags tale, where Undine, in her powerful job and sexually charged relationship all come to an end, along with her money, social status and any other privileges she may have accumulated being a privileged member of society. From Manhattan she returns to Brooklyn, back to the family she verbally murdered and physically separated herself from for fourteen years. Nottage hands Undine’s character chunks and chunks of humble pie over and over again throughout the play; Penniless, in Brooklyn, going to jail, being sentenced to substance abusers meetings, buying drugs from a ‘hood rat,’ lining up in a never ending Social Services queue and to top it off, an unwanted pregnancy. Undine goes from what she calls ‘the privileged class’ to ‘the under class, the negro class.’
Anyone’s fall from grace is inevitably painful, yet with the tone that I believe that Nottage intended and what the director captures perfectly is the lightheartedness, the humor and the reduction of the seriousness of very serious issues. As what we are handed here are some extreme issues, however with the eccentricity of Jenny Jules playing Undine and of the plot, whilst watching the play we almost don’t realize what lies beneath the surface of some of these characters and more importantly Lynn Nottage.
A technique that reminds me of the Harlem renaissance writers, communicating pain through laughter, rhetoric and disguise; words that may appear futile and insignificant were words that came from a much deeper place, communicating deep rooted issues.
Nevertheless the audience are aroused and humored throughout the play, with laughs and jokes lined up one after the next. The Yuroban spiritualist had a great affect on the audience and had them in uproar, I also found Alison a delight to watch, changing her accent from the thick New York accent to that of what sounded a Latin American.
What I enjoyed and valued realness of the play, some of the characters I felt I had met, passed on the street earlier that day, I knew someone like them or a part of them existed in me. I took pleasure in the contemporary feel of the play and liked knowing these characters, not only in the Tricycle theatre, but in the world, American sitcoms, London streets and of course Black women.
However, being a black woman and believing I possess the black paradox W. E.B DuBois and many Harlem Renaissance artist spoke of, this was also what I disliked about the play. I believed Nottage was reinforcing the black stereotypes and placing on stage the black characters that even if one had never been acquainted with a black person would know these characters. There is the common reference throughout the play to the black man concerned with material goods, who is uneducated and disrespectful towards women. The Nigerian man who plays with spirits and magic, Flo, Undine’s brother, who worked as a Security guard, like their mother and father, had never got out of Brooklyn, still lived at home with his parents and was writing a never ending poem which he believed would someday be his ticket to success. Undine’s ex-boyfriend, the ‘gangsta rapper’ concerned with illusions of grandeur and falsifying dreams and going nowhere. Then finally of course Undine herself – who Nottage may have allowed to slightly break the mould; however in a once existing stereotype amongst the blacks (that may still exist in a lesser scale), she strengthens the opinions that the black person who breaks the mould and gains success, forgets who they are, diminishes their roots and as they climb up the ladder their skin becomes lighter. This is Undine.
Can the privileged black woman not know herself?
Apparantly not, in fact the privileged black woman is afraid of herself, in denial and cutting herself off from her roots. In the audience I heard a comment, ‘Undine wants to be white.’ It is a debate within me whether Undine’s fear was being black or being of a working class – however as mentioned above, even this she associates with the Negro class – being black.
The play not only deals with being black, but being a female and the state of society. Trapped in the patriarchal system, a woman is behind bars for defending herself against a man who has taken it upon himself to touch her as he feels – a common occurrence in plays by women. This scene is acted out wonderfully and she extorts all the frustration and anger you can imagine a woman who’s behind bars for protecting herself would have. She triumphantly states at the end of her monologue ‘I believe I just introduced him to a feminist movement!’ At this point the audience applauds her, her performance in this scene was amazing and shone out of all the scenes in the play.
The play possesses the frustration of being suppressed by any form of categorization or label, as these are what have the ability to oppress us. What I believe the play communicates in someway is that regardless of hierarchal rankings, which ever category one may fall into there are consequences and expectations. Nottage presents this to her audience in regards to race, social class and gender.
However in the opinion of this review this play is a black play, maybe not to all, but specifically to the black audience and specifically to me.
The play on a whole, taking it for face value, which I’m sure the majority of the audience did was a laugh a minute. It is a play, that regardless whether the audience is concerned with the issues it deals with or not, has a hilarious plot, an array of brilliant characters and settings and an accessible sense of humor that makes this play a play that cannot not be enjoyed!