Running as part of Cork RTC's ambitiously broad Arts Fest, this is an unusual one-man show staged in the unlikely surrounds of the City Centre night club. Billed as a home-cooked, Negro narrative, Uncle Bends is just that, black American actor Bob Devon-Jones spinning bittersweet yarns from race memory while simultaneously rustling up some tantalisingly aromatic rice and beans for the audience.
The stories he tells are a mix of sound testimonies from the heartbreak annals of Deep South slavery and pen pictures sketched from his own family's history and shaded by experience. Bob is RADA-trained and it shows. In the manner of graduates from that prestigious academy, the delivery is shudderingly resonant and he swaps roles and tones with a practised aplomb.
He skilfully moves from the emotive thought patterns of a 90-year-old woman to the easy chat of a shoe-shine boy and the performance is seamlessly gummed together, punctuated only by Bob's musings on the cooking of beans.
But the show's very diversity may be its main structural drawback, because the voices are many and diverse, it is difficult for a narrative spine or central seam to clearly emerge.
Cork RTC Artsfest runs until the weekend: contact 021-326445 for details.
