The play is set in the American midwest and so the fact that the returning man and the woman are white and the husband is black has a significance a UK audience perhaps doesn't feel - the programme quotes an American journalist writing that "I doubt I will live long enough to see the day when little black boys and little white girls walk hand in hand and no one, absolutely no one, raises an eyebrow". Well, I remember living in a quiet part of Tottenham in the late 70s and no one seemed to raise an eyebrow then to the many mixed race couples on the street. Perhaps some did, I just feel that this is a particularly American sensibility that doesn't play as strongly in the UK. Fortunately the play stands up without the need to 'feel the pain'. What does happen though, in the closing narration of the play, is a fascinating and disturbing speech in which our superficially laid back narrator reveals a darker, nastier side that lurks just below the surface - the words "coon" and "nigger" are not ones we are used to hearing spat from the stage with such venom and they trully move our emotions ...
Set against a particularly appealing backdrop this is a thought-provoking play well worth the watching even on a steaming hot summer evening. What we see on stage are trully credible characters talking simple, natural, language to reveal a good story and aspects of the nature of truth. Or do they?
Robert Iles
