Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Bradley Thompson, Dorcas Sebuyange.

Everybody has a tale, a story in which to impart, it might be the only one they ever tell in frustration or anger, it might be the only one related with open eyes and truth within their soul. However, everybody’s stories deserve to be told; even one that might prove to be counter-productive to the general feeling, for without that story, a meeting of minds cannot be held in balance.

As a prelude to the play Lampedusa which was being held in the Unity Two space on Hope Place, one of most extraordinary playwrights who calls Liverpool home, Keith Saha, combined with both local young actors Bradley Thompson and Dorcas Sebuyange to create a piece that was both a wonderful appetiser to the main event and one that again hit home at the idea of migration as both an escape and the jail into which the narrow minded and the afraid will use as a stick in which to beat others with.

A simple story was unravelled in African Beach Party but it was a tale from the advantage of both the sides of an imperfect divide, a duologue that took the idea of how non-indigenous people can be seen as both adding vibrancy, influence and skill to a countries wealth and yet due to unforeseen factors in another’s life, illness, unemployment, circumstances beyond the control of nature, can cloud a person’s judgment and thoughts, can lead down a road into which the likes of Mosley’s evil ghost can flourish once more.

Told with a certain sense of beauty by both Bradley Thompson and Dorcas Sebuyange, African Beach Party takes the audience down a path where both arguments can be seen to be one of anguish and fear but also in which holds a certain truth for those on one side or the other, the great divide is nothing but an argument after all.

Ian D. Hall