Families are taking centre stage this week in Theatreland. Following Polly Stenham’s vivid new tale about the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and her son, which opened at the Royal Court theatre on Wednesday, Eclipse Theatre’s One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show brings its story of a middleclass Black family to the Tricycle theatre.
Set in suburban Philadelphia, One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show introduces you to the Harrisons, a Christian family who have been joined in their lavish home by their teenage niece Kimberly. Following her father’s death, Kimberly, who has moved to the Harrisons’ classy neighbourhood from the rural south, is to remain in the custody of his friend and business partner Caleb.
Reminiscent of American TV shows The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air and The Cosby Show, Don Evans’ 1970s comedy is played out in front of a live studio audience, the words ‘on air’ glowing in bright capitals above Libby Watson’s divided set, which juxtaposes the plush family living room against Caleb’s dingy office-come-bedroom located above the seedy nightclub he owned with Kimberly’s father.
A strong cast ensures hilarity throughout the two and a half hours of Dawn Walton’s high energy and over-the-top production, which draws upon racial and class prejudices in African American society to comic effect.
First up is Jocelyn Jee Esien’s Myra, a prudish middleclass woman who doesn’t know whether to quiver, faint or vomit at the mere mention of the word ‘sex’. Resolutely protective and proud of her family’s well-to-do reputation, Esien emanates hilarity as the mispronouncing mother whose description of her own social status is more ‘boozy’ than ‘bourgeois’.
She is supported in the comedy-crammed cast by Isaac Ssebandeke as Felix, a sex-deprived teenager whose erratic body language evokes an image of a manic creature – an older and more mature version of himself – inside him desperate to escape, and his streetwise girlfriend L’il Bits, who appears twice his age in the form of Rochelle Rose.
Throw in Karl Collins as Myra’s preacher husband Avery, who is more mesmerised by his son’s copy of The Joy Of Sex than even the horniest hormone-filled teenager, Jacqueline Boatswain as L’il Bits’ overprotective weapon-wielding mother, Rebecca Scroggs as Kimberly, a country bumpkin-turned-independent woman, and Clifford Samuel as Caleb whose relationship with his newly acquired adoptive daughter stands somewhere between father and boyfriend, and you’re guaranteed an anarchic and amusing evening.
Interspersing dialogue with individual soliloquys, the production sees many of the characters entirely transformed for the second half, which is injected with a healthy increase in pace in comparison to the first, leaving no need for the canned studio laughter, as grunts, exclamations and raucous enjoyment emanate from the Tricycle theatre’s very own press night audience.