Culturosity

Attention Londoners! So you've found yourself stuck on a remote island paradise - far away from home, with so much time, yet so little to do. Never fear. First there was the British weather all week, then there's Alex Smailes' show on Thursday night, and on Saturday the Trinidad Theatre Workshop Film Series presents Playing Away, a film by Horace Ove.

To mark the conclusion of their "Third World Week" celebration, a cricket team in a small English village invites a West Indian cricket team from South London to a charity game.
Not surprisingly, there's wariness on both sides. But Willie Boy (Norman Beaton), the proud, wryly philosophical captain of the Conquistadors, is intent on accepting the invitation. Meanwhile, the captain of the Sneddington Cricket Club, the innocent but overweeningly self-satisfied Derek (Nicholas Farell), is confident of a handy Sunday afternoon victory.
Obviously, the possibilities, both comic and serious, in this cultural exchange are endless, and the filmmakers seem not to have missed any of them. But, for all the film's abundant humor, Ove, said to be Britain's first black film maker, and the Oxford-educated Phillips, never let us forget that racial tensions lurk beneath the occasion's sure of good will. In the end, Playing Away’s pleasures are subtle and genuine.”

TTW screenings are free, and showtime is 7PM. Read a decade old NY Times review here.