The title could hardly be more symbolic - sitting in Limbo, waiting for something to happen, caught in no man's land. Both Dawn Penso and Judy Hepburn's characters and the fortunes of Carib Theatre's director Anton Phillips could as neatly be summarised in the title of this deft, affecting, Caribbean two-hander.
If it wasn't so lamentable it would be wonderful. For Sitting in Limbo signals curtains for Carib, the company nurtured by Phillips for nearly 20 years. Tastes and time, of course, change. What grabbed Phillips in 1980 may not suit or fit today's younger generation of black artists.
All the same, Phillips and his fellow travellers have every right to feel aggrieved at the way support and funding have dribbled away over the past two years. Now only two theatre companies remain and with Sitting in Limbo, black theatre's limitations and its blessings are all too evident.
In comparison with even the roughest of early black theatre, Sitting in Limbo falls into the most conventional of forms and settings - two women and a bare room supposed to evoke the island of Grenada just after the real-life American-backed invasion, in which Pauline Black's haughty, ambitious, ex-ministerial
high-flyer now finds herself guarded by the less educated, naively God-fearing warder of Lavern Archer.
Cue perhaps familiar investigations into close encounters under pressure - and you'd be right, up to a point. But seldom do you see women - and Afro-Caribbean women at that - given their voice this way, or issues of class, independence (personal and geographic), and common kinship investigated with such originality, warmth, and robust good humour. Altogether inspiring, it makes the company's demise all the more, as I said, lamentable.
Sitting in Limbo is at the Tricycle until May 16.
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