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Waterloo Sunset

By Barrie Keeffe. The author of Gotcha! and self-styled writer of plays aimed at “people who wouldn’t be seen dead in a theatre” comes up trumps again with a sympathetic look at racial and generational misunderstanding. A young man and his elderly relative (Queenie Watts) live on a London housing estate which has recently become predominantly Afro-Caribbean.

The old dear, aging rapidly in a fast-changing and hostile South London, flits between irascible highs (banging out the titular Kinks song with semi-tuneful abandon on an old joanna at the play’s opening) with disillusioned, aimless drifts round the streets, trying to keep her old man’s words of socialist brotherhood (he fought in the Spanish Civil War, alongside all creeds) at the front of her mind as she sees division and alienation all about. Eventually, she blows everything at her neighbours’ party, blacking up with cocoa in order to ‘fit in ‘with them, and she has to leave, being driven away to a home in a taxi. Also starring Robbie Coltrane and Floella Benjamin.

Her old man fought in the Spanish Civil War, you know The ultimate disastrous-yet-well-meaning gesture
2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. George White

    August 27, 2016 at 5:00 pm

    Isn’t Swiftnick from DIck Turpin in it?

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1542023/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1 THis UK short seems to be a homage//
    Sissy Spacek’s nephew Mark made a Waterloo Sunset too with London to Brihton’s Marianne Maniwhatschamacallitis and PAUL Murphy.

  2. Paul Wild

    May 1, 2021 at 10:46 am

    Queenie Watts died the year after she was in this and she was only 56 when she died. Strange how watching this in 1979 I thought that she was an old lady. She was made up presumably to look older. A wonderful actress Queenie Watts,a proper Londoner. They are rare today. Baroness Benjamin has done well for herself.

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