“THEY say you shouldn’t go back. They say you should keep moving forward like a train.”
Despite this observation, the characters in Winsome Pinnock’s new work are held by signals of the past. And it’s appropriate that the tragedy that hangs over the play should have taken place in a London Underground tunnel since we’re often kept in the dark as to why her protagonists act the way they do.
Cyrus (Brian Bovell), a Tube driver, has just hit someone on the track, the “one under” of the title. Traumatised, he abandons work and his family to find out why the man he killed wanted to die.
Intercut with his quest is the last day of the suicidal, rootless Sonny (Daon Broni), the adopted black son of a white middle-class woman (Lynn Farleigh). He plies Christine (Adie Allen), a launderette manager, with compliments, flowers and the promise of the best day out she’ll ever have.
Why does Sonny lavish attention on a woman he has never met before? Could he be the child that Cyrus gave up as a teenage father? The questions mount up and the answers only gradually emerge through an increasingly unbelievable set of interconnected relationships that involves fostering and a hit-and-run incident as well as the “unfinished business” that can stall our lives.
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Fate and coincidence are other weighty themes raised but they also govern the plot and flatten our belief in the drama. Sonny and Cyrus’s behaviour puzzles more than it intrigues. Even when their motives become clear, it stretches credulity. The patience of Sonny’s family towards the obsessive Cyrus and Christine’s acceptance of the intense Sonny also never ring true.
Despite strong performances, including Bovell as the guilt-ridden Cyrus, Allen as the always cutting-and-running Christine, and Farleigh as Sonny’s grieving mother, the script’s measured, lecture-like tone and the stiff pacing of Jennie Darnell’s production keep one at a distance. It’s a shame because the play offers intriguing glimpses of metropolitan lives cast adrift by a lack of cultural roots and the inability to connect with other people.
Geoffrey Burton, as a Caribbean cleaner grounded by family, and Sarah Ozeke as Christine’s assistant, able to adopt a persona off the dry-cleaning rack, bring the action to vibrant life. Sadly they are only minor players in a play full of stimulating ideas but lacking the soul to make us engage fully with them.
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