Hackney Empire Studio presents
A U.K. Premiere
Jamaica Farewell
Directed by Francis Megahy
Written by Debra Ehrhardt
Hackney Empire
7 - 26 October 2008
 zen
A review by Tim Jeeves for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Debra Ehrhardt can certainly talk. Throughout the entire 90 minutes of Jamaica, Farewell there is a little pause for breath, let alone interludes for a moodily lit movement sequence or lengthy sections of atmospheric sound design.
But that’s not a criticism, it takes a lot of talking to successfully portray some twenty or thirty characters and we get little chance to grow tired of her voice when its characterisation keeps changing, so the short scenes and variety of language also help keep the play moving at quite a pace. Helped by a simple set and clever use of light and sound, she tells us of her journey from the Jamaica where she was born to the America that she had longed for from as long ago as she could remember.
The story she tells is based on her own life experiences, and begins when she was a whippersnapper of seven, a young girl obsessed with America, singing Yankee-doodle-dandee at school and wishing she was able to visit Disneyworld like her friend Charmagne.
From this point on her dream is to live in America and, whilst this end is achieved, I won’t spoil any more of the plot other than to let you know that she enlists the unwitting support of an American CIA agent to smuggle a million dollars through customs and has a truly awful encounter with a man with dirty dreadlocks and a face like Lucifer.
Alongside this story, the audience gains a pitted understanding of the recent political history of Jamaica and an insight into what the lives of ordinary people became after the election of the socialist PNP party in 1972.
America being the highly politicised topic that it is, it might be tempting to introduce some questions about such an overwhelming obsession to be in the country as Ehrhardt’s, and of course her naive belief in the American Dream does ring a little hollow.
But as director Francis Megahy states in his introduction to the piece, the America that is referenced in the play is a very different nation than the one which has developed under George W Bush, whilst the flashes that we see of Ehrhardt’s current life in the States reveal that the dream has faded into something a little more realistic.
As we absorb the less contemporary idea of America that is promoted by these devices, the play becomes a more general parable about struggling for your dreams, and the sacrifices that need to made for them.
Such comparisons can’t be pushed too far, I suspect that Ehrhardt’s aim in making the play was to tell her story, not provide a metaphor for the human condition, and if this was the case, there can be little argument that she succeeds.
A well-crafted and put together piece of honest and charming autobiography.
Ticket Info: £14.50
Box Office: 020 8985 2424
www.hackneyempire.co.uk
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