Wednesday, February 15, 2012
theater 'Jamaica Farewell' finds humor en route to America
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 12:17 PM
- Academy Theatre
- Debra Ehrhardt
Actress/playwright Debra Ehrhardt so thoroughly surprises audiences with her one-woman show Jamaica Farewell, she could make a second career designing camouflage. Finishing a three-week run at the Academy Theatre this weekend, Jamaica Farewell begins by flashing back to her girlhood in the Caribbean nation, with ominous intimations of a drunken parent and countrywide violence.
Initially you brace yourself for the story of an unhappy childhood along the lines of The Syringa Tree or Angela’s Ashes. When Ehrhardt devotes the play’s second half to a brazen attempt to immigrate to America, however, Jamaica Farewell reveals its true nature as an uproarious, stranger-than-fiction comedy.
At first, Ehrhardt flashes back to herself as a seven year-old intoxicated with the idea of America. Young “Debbie” even sings “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at a school talent competition. Her hard-drinking, gambling father weighs down her family’s middle-class aspirations, unfortunately, and Debbie recalls repo men cleaning out the household furniture on more than one occasion.
Just when Ehrhardt’s little-girl body language and piping voice begins to wear thin, Jamaica Farewell jumps forward to her high school graduation. She gets accepted at an American college, but the Catch-22s of Jamaican travel and immigration conspire to keep her at home. The 1970s see a sharp increase in Jamaican class tensions and violence as gangs of increasingly brazen thugs roam the streets with impunity.
Ehrhardt peppers the early scenes with light-hearted anecdotes, and the comedic tone takes over for the play’s second half. She strikes up a flirtatious relationship with an American diplomat who claims to be with the CIA and warms up to Jamaica’s music and cuisine. When Debbie learns that her employer needs to smuggle a fortune in cash out of the country, she concocts a wild scheme to get a VISA and make her escape.
Jamaica Farewell turns into a combination of spy thriller and slapstick comedy, particularly when Debbie embarks on an ill-fated cross-country trip that leads her to hilariously unsafe, squalid middle-of-nowhere villages. An excellent storyteller and monologist, Ehrhardt imitates such quirky characters as a Chinese fellow named “Bullet” and a dreadlocked, cross-eyed figure who looks like “the Devil himself.”
A touring production optioned for a film by My Big Fat Wedding Director Joel Zwick, Jamaica Farewell at times has the quality of the kind of well-rehearsed yarn Ehrhardt pulls out at family gatherings. Partly that reflects the ingratiating way she treats the audience as old friends. You can imagine running into her after the fact, tugging her on the arm and saying, “Tell us again the story of how you came to America.”
Jamaica Farewell. 4 p.m. Feb. 20-21. Academy Theatre, 119 Center St, Avondale Estates, 404-474-8332. academytheatre.org
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