Even with the aid of a glossary, a synopsis and a published text, I found large tracts of Marcia Layne's first play impenetrable. This is because much of the dialogue is in Jamaican patois, and, while I admire Layne's urge to recreate a vibrant local culture, there comes a point when comprehension has to take precedence over authenticity.
Layne's play is based on a good idea: two second-generation immigrant women return to Jamaica for a holiday that turns into a voyage of self-discovery. Anisha, a student accountant, is in search of her father, a pastor who abandoned the family when she was nine. Babs, a larky drifter, hopes to satisfy her spiritual and sexual hunger by returning to her roots. While Babs hooks up with an amiable sand-raker and Anisha with a Rastafarian taxi driver, Layne leaves open the women's fates.
The best scene, not in the printed text, is one where a hard-headed Jamaican mother confirms Babs's feelings about the dank racism of English life: when the former said of England, "I always felt like a square peg in a round hole", there werecries of approval from the Leeds ladies behind me. Layne also neatly exploits the irony by which Babs yearns for her Jamaican heritage while her penurious boyfriend, Passion, lies back and thinks of England.
But Layne's play is short on social detail and ducks what might have been its most dramatic confrontation: leaving out the reunion of Anisha with her long-lost father is rather like playing Pericles without the meeting of Marina and her itinerant dad.
Although Joanna Parker has come up with a highly seductive set of sand, palm trees and beach huts, Layne's play is not done any favours by Femi Elufowoju's production. The problems with the patois are compounded by too many scenes being played in the remote corners of the in-the-round stage.
Maxine Burth as the anxiety-ridden Anisha, Yvette Rochester Duncan as the roots-seeking Babs and Johann Myers as a beach-bum in designer T-shirts all give lively performances, and the evening has a laid-back charm. But I defy non-Jamaicans to grasp some of the lines without intensive prior study.
· Until July 12. Box office: 0113-213 7700.
