REVIEW: BLACK VELVET Camden Fringe at Old Red Lion Theatre 29th – 31st July; 3rd – 4th August 2024

‘darkly comic play’ ★★★★

Christina Knight’s debut play Black Velvet presents a rich and complex analysis of grief and loss, set within the allegedly haunted walls of the Old Red Lion Theatre. Directed by Eamon O’Flynn and performed by Charles Ison and Knight herself, the story takes place amongst the wilted roses, black bin bags and relational trauma that surround Llew’s (Ison) mother’s gravestone. Hiding from the blood his cat has left in his apartment, Llew brings his mother fresh flowers, accompanied by outlandish conversation. But as he beds down for the evening, an argumentative, somewhat feral, and brilliantly avoidant Irish Catholic schoolgirl crawls out from behind his mother’s headstone, where she has been sleeping for over a week. “Can you go and find somebody else’s grave to haunt?” Llew pleads, as Aoife (Knight), refuses without remorse to relocate.

Over three acts, Llew and Aoife pulse back and forth from one another, arguing the concept of grief: its stages, its universality, and its impression on our (in)voluntary participation in life. While Llew could be described as a man delivering a masterclass in toxic positivity, their dynamic is testament to an impressive performance from Knight; her ability to switch between a sad, orphaned, teenage girl and an eloquent young woman furious with the hand she’s been dealt carries the pace of the play powerfully.

On the other side of this brisk and darkly comic two-hander is Llew, a young man who, insisting he’s not a pervert, commits himself to understanding Aoife and her grief, in place – it seems – of facing his own reality. Ison plays this character with the unkempt and chaotic energy of a schoolteacher desperate to be friends with his pupils. Llew is full of wise but unsolicited opinions on Aoife’s situation: “What you want is comfort: an oasis in the graveyard of your pain,” and he becomes so blinded by rescuing this young girl that he forgives her for hitting him, kissing him, hitting him a second time, and even flakes on plans with his five-year-old daughter.

It is unclear whether he genuinely cares for Aoife and her loss, or whether his insistence on her opening up is a projection of a need that he cannot get met himself. We hear little about how his mother died, only that she fell asleep in the bath after they’d had an argument. While Llew has been to support groups and talked excessively about losing his mum, his interminable positivity is contradicted by moments of extreme anger at Aoife when she struggles to adhere to his particular way of mourning. He acts as a self-righteous pseudo-therapist in the subject of loss – a rescuer, doggedly daring to fix its victim. He is perhaps so positive that he cannot hear his own sadness, and the kick he gets out of Aoife’s long-awaited, emotionally saturated speech about her mother is somewhat unjustified.

However, what the play lacks in Llew’s backstory, it makes up for in intricate and beautifully executed monologues about death and moving on. Llew acts as a vessel for Aoife’s emotional deluge in a final conversation with her mother, which punctuates the play with vivid imagery and a reminder of the heart-wrenching hole that losing someone you have loved leaves behind.

Black Velvet by Christina Knight

Old Red Lion Theatre

29^th – 31^st July; 3^rd – 4^th August

Box office https://camdenfringe.com/events/black-velvet/

Christina Knight as Aoife

Charles Ison as Llew 
Directed by Eamon O'Flynn
Written by Christina Knight

Reviewer Bio

Imo Redpath is a writer and actor for theatre, radio and TV. She graduated from an MFA in Scriptwriting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama and her plays ‘Foxes & Rabbits’ and ‘Pigs’ are currently in development. She writes a comedy blog on Substack about living with ADHD in London.