Low Down

Portraying the reactions of New Yorkers to a slave ship rising out of the Hudson River, Daniel Beaty creates an enthralling piece of theatre.

Review

Daniel Beaty bursts onto the stage in a flood of energy that he manages to maintain throughout the hour and a quarter performance of Emergen-see! Describing the supernatural rising of a slave ship out of the Hudson River, the performance combines Beaty’s talents as an actor, poet and singer.

This is a truly excellent piece of theatre – I have seen a lot of one person shows at this festival, but none of them convey the breadth and humanity of the characters Daniel manages to create. The story focuses on an old man, whose desire to be like the white man has clouded his mind, and he has failed to teach his two sons the truth about their slave ancestors.

The play is peppered with songs, sung in Beaty’s deep soulful voice, including the great contradiction, Amazing Grace - penned not as many people think by slaves, but written in fact by a white, British ex-slave ship owner, John Newton.

There are also the ‘Poetry Café’ inserts – a place within the play where poets come to perform, and where one of the characters is meant to be on the evening his father boards this slave ship. At first I thought this was a rather obvious device to display Beaty’s talents as a poet, as it allows for his poems to be fully recited in a relatively un-contextualised setting. However, once I had heard the poems this ceased to matter, as these passionately performed, wonderfully written pieces were so moving and apt that it didn’t matter where or how you were hearing them.

This play well deserved its Fringe First Award, and despite the fact it ended with Beaty singing a religious song that appeared to be a little preachy, I didn’t want to stop clapping at the end.

Reviewed by AB 25/08/07

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