Blest Be the Tie ( Archived )

Reviews

Pictured L to R: Ellen Thomas, Lorna Gayle, Marion Bailey

Photograhy Alistair Muir

Florence is happy enough. Having come to England as a young woman to provide for her family in Jamaica, she now lives alone in a shabby council high-rise overlooking Clapham Junction, buoyed up by her children’s successes and the companionship of neighbour Eunice, the white woman whose marriage she helped to sustain by teaching her ‘how to look after a black man.’ Then one day Florence’s estranged sister Martha comes to stay, disrupting her rather staid existence and forcing her to confront some hard realities about the ties that bind.

Dona Daley’s diaspora play is a clever variation on the classic love triangle: in essence, Martha and Eunice fight over the affections of Florence, urging competing claims of blood and friendship and raising larger questions of national ‘belonging’ into the bargain. The writing is both funny and subtle in its aims, building a satisfying complex portrait both of individual personalities and larger political processes. For instance, when snobbish Martha criticises the Queen’s curtains at Buckingham Palace and discovers delightedly that Piccadilly Circus, the place she was taught at school to regard as ‘the hub of the empire’, consists of just one little statue and a whole lot of dirt, the outburst tells us as much about the speaker’s affectations as it does about broader post-imperial tensions.

Paulette Randall’s engaging production boasts three excellent performances: Ellen Thomas as glamorous, primping, leopardskin-clad Martha; Marion Bailey as the loyal friend and sex-enthusiast Eunice; and Lorna Gayle as Florence, a proud, good-humoured woman who ultimately finds that conflicting loyalties can be reconciled.

Robert Shore TIME OUT 27 April 2004

Florence left Jamaica more than 30 years ago, the eldest daughter in a poor family, determined to do well in England and help her family out of poverty. But the twists and turns of fate often mean that you find yourself at an unexpected destination, and as she approaches old age Florence is derailed in a pokey high-rise council flat in Clapham Junction. Not that she’s complaining. Her loving children have grown up and done well, she has her few precious things around her and her great friend Eunice, and even though she has to scrimp for a winter coat for herself, she is still sending off the annual Christmas package to the folks back home. Only the folks back home – or rather Florence’s younger sister – are now on Florence’s 12th-floor doorstep.

…You would have to be a complete grump not to take a shine to Daley’s characters, and her simple storytelling that proves ordinary can be interesting.

Lyn Gardner THE GUARDIAN 23 April 2004

Director Paulette Randall handles this tender piece of theatre sympathetically: the characters are given plenty of space to develop, the issues brought up are pointed and it’s fun to watch.

Siobhan Murphy METRO 22 April 2004

In its evocation of a life lived for others, Blest Be the Tie is poignant, and its dialogue is often vivid and witty. It also humanises questions of race and nationality, asking whether “home” is where you live or where you come from it’s impossible not to warm to Ellen Thomas as the pouty, posing Martha, Lorna Gayle’s long-suffering Florence and Marion Bailey’s cheery, practical Eunice.

Sam Marlowe THE TIMES 26 April 2004

poignant and truthful

Dominic Cavendish THE TELEGRAPH 24 April 2004