ONE MONKEY DON’T STOP NO SHOW Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

The Eclipse Theatre Company is the only Black-led national touring company delivering an annual national middle scale tour. Their latest production is a revival of a comedy written in 1982 by Don Evans (1938-2003), an African-American playwright, director, actor, teacher, who was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Evans, friend and colleague of the great August Wilson, though not in his league, saw himself writing in the tradition of Shaw and Moliere. The script, which hones in on a respectable middle class Black family who live in an all-white area in Pittsburgh, is mixture of bawdy comedy, racial snobbery and social commentary. Dawn Watson directs it as if it were a live sit com show with canned applause for the actors’ entrances. The actors act as if they were in The Cosby Show. There are two exceptions. Clifford Samuel (as a street-wise club owner) and Beverley Harrison (as a bright girl from the South) act as if they were in a stage play, and the comedy is all the better for it.