Does One Monkey Don't Stop No Show make enough of its younger characters? Naima Khan reviews.
Sitcom humour is easy unless you're really pushing preconceived notions of what audiences will like. In pre-Cosby Show America, Don Evans' One Monkey Don't Stop No Show was probably doing just that and covering as many issues (read: too many) as he does in this play, he was probably doing it well. But does Dawn Walton's recent revival hold up for a group of people I don't hesitate to call The Fresh Prince Generation?
The short answer is no. While it pulls off all the light-hearted humour about a randy preacher and his wife rediscovering their sex lives (last night's audience loving this!) and a nerdy college freshman hooking up with an head-strong girl from the hood; it fails to highlight the more witty intelligent points Evans makes with his younger characters about an as yet unestablished culture for "bourgeois niggers" in '70s America.
It's made worse by director Dawn Walton's decision to stage it as a TV recording so that we are the studio audience. With this framing, it exempts the show from making any effort to win us over to the characters or their issues. It's assumed we're already fans happy to get whipped up into a frenzy whenever they grace the stage.
The story revolves around the upwardly mobile Harrisons, a black family who've succumbed to the suburban mentality of keeping up with the Joneses and here, the Joneses are all white. So there's an interesting projection of class issues into a racial preoccupation which is a vessel for the mother Myra's (Jocelyn Jee Esien) delusions of grandeur and some one-liners that are just gold.
We're led to believe her world is turned upside down by the arrival of country bumpkin Beverly who isn't as interesting as her guardian Caleb (fantastic Clifford Samuels), who's from the less Christian neighbourhood shall we say. With these characters come ideas about country naivete vs city smarts and a loud scene about black women being too aggressive and what it means for them to date white men. These are the kind of discourses that still make for a lot contemporary humour but Walton doesn't seem to note this.
Instead, a lot of the comedy is centred on the surreptitious reading of The Joy of Sex. It's amusing enough but by the end of the first half you're left wondering where the story can possibly go and the second half doesn't make you care much unless you're into menopausal awkward sexy times.
One Monkey Don't Stop No Show runs at Tricycle Theatre until
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