» Review: Echoes Of Brighton
A great commission from White Room Theatre. Former Fringe First winner Ella Hickson was asked to write monologues introducing some of the lesser known characters from Brighton’s chequered history: Harry Vowles ‘The Blind Busker’; his fellow Victorian Christiana Edmunds, ‘the chocolate cream poisoner’; and Ras Prince Monolulu, the Guyanese tipster who plied his trade at Brighton Racecourse until the ‘50s. Archive photos and news reports effectively set each scene. But unfortunately two of the performances were no match for Hickson’s imaginative and often arresting writing. It was left to Israel Oyelumade as Ras, the charismatic, flamboyantly dressed chancer with his ruling principles of ‘luck and noise’, to haul back the energy and the intrigue. This the former RSC actor accomplished in one flash of teeth, cuffs and head feathers. (As a programme note pointed out, Ras’s dress sense appears to have been not dissimilar to Jimi Hendrix.)
The Old Courtroom, 8 May
3/5
Bella Todd
