Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Robyn Paterson.
When you don’t feel safe in the area you have lived virtually all your life, do you try to change your location and begin again, be a stranger in another country, or do you try and change yourself, to try and feel the revolution that is going on around you and go with the flow? Either way you might lose something of yourself, something that makes you, you and it is not something you can ever regain.
The heartbreak of prising yourself away from your home, your memories, your friends, is no easy thing to do; if there is even one little thing holding you in that place then where you go to will not be the same. It is a premise that is performed with great facial agility and dexterity of voice by Robyn Paterson in the Edinburgh Fringe play The South Afreakins. A play which deals with two retired people who find that their lives in the African country has changed over the years and whilst the husband can still live with his lot, the thought of golf and being near his dead son more an overriding need than moving away.
It is a question that many retired people find themselves asking when they believe there may be more to life than memories, the urge to either start anew or escape the change that is always inevitable when a town or a city becomes something out of the ordinary to them. It is a question that Robyn Paterson delivers with genuine style and care, that she is able to switch with ease and perfect timing between the two voices, the masculine and female dominance, is entertaining and unblemished.
Whilst it is always a thrill to run away and start again, The South Afreakins shows just what can happen if the reason why you run is only of fear and not because of adventure, then to want to return home is always going to be option that will live in your heart.
A class play, one in which the audience are received as neighbours and friends and who see up close the eyes of the two characters in the actor’s vision and who cannot help but feel the sorrow, frustration and love in each. A determined play, Ms. Paterson is on fire in her portrayal.
Ian D. Hall