Let There Be Love

Synopsis

When West Indian pensioner Alfred Morris is kicked out of his daughter's Croydon house he returns to his Willesden home to find he's been gifted a 'Polish cleaner/home help'. Eager to learn the ways of her new land, the cantankerous and xenophobic Alfred realises that he may indeed still have a role in life: he could teach Maria to be British - and if he succeeds, maybe she might help him in the most unexpected way!

Our Review:

22 January 2008

The Home Secretary is afraid to go out at night, the economy is in free-fall and schools are being fitted with metal detectors to combat knife-crime. The world outside the Tricycle might have been expected to be reflected in Let There Be Love.

If anyone knows about the mean streets, about poverty, inequality and casual violence it is Kwame Kwei-Armah, whose multi award-winning Elmina’s Kitchen dealt unblinkingly with the savagery of black-on-black crime in Hackney. His two subsequent plays in a trilogy about Black British life have relied more on verbal fireworks, but Fix Up and Statement of Regret (currently on in the NT Cottesloe) tackled uncomfortable ideological questions, including divisions in the black community. Kwei-Armah has shown himself to be outspoken and fearless.

But what have we here? Let There Be Love is charming - even, dare one say, sentimental. It begins with what purports to be a deb...

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Latest User Review

carole woddis - 22 January 2008:

Couldn't disagree more with rds. Fatuous it ain't. A tad sentimental in places maybe, but I don't think dealing with euthanasia, family fracture or inverted racism exactly leaves Kwame open to that charge. Sure he mixes the serious with the comic but in a way that lightly diffuses moments of quite intense emotion. And the performances are beautifully judged, especially Joe Marcell's Alfred, limbering up surely for a crack at Lear. If I have a quibble, it's to do with the underwritten and insensitively portrayed Gemma and the contrastingly over-indulgently written Maria. A flawed gem as someone has written elsewhere. ...

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