M Ensemble: I Ain't Yo' Uncle (1 review)

M Ensemble opened Robert Alexander's I Ain't Yo' Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin on April 16.

Jerry Maple Jr. directs a cast that includes Latrice Bruno, Curtis Allen, Carey Hart, Dominick Daniel, Loye Hawkins, and Rosemary Cipolla.

Christine Dolen reviews for the Miami Herald:

When an artfully antagonistic version of Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin kicks off M Ensemble's new show with a hip-hop rant about Harriet Beecher Stowe, you can't help thinking, ``This is going to be good.''

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And whenever Latrice Bruno's politically aware Topsy is onstage in Robert Alexander's I Ain't Yo' Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin, the satire is good: tart, illuminating, deliciously comedic. But alas, Bruno isn't onstage often enough.

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The larger problem is that playwright Alexander simply squanders too many opportunities for pithy satirical insight into the bestselling novel of the 19th century. Instead, the abolitionist tome's familiar characters -- Topsy, Uncle Tom (Curtis Allen), Eliza (Carey Hart), George (Dominick Daniel), Little Eva (also played by Hart), Simon Legree (Loye Hawkins) and the rest of Stowe's famous crew -- slog through the plot as though they're demonstrating to the defensive Stowe (Rosemary Cipolla) the myriad ways in which she got it wrong.

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The production's dozen actors range from competent to good (Hart, Daniel and Allen) to the in-a-class-by-herself Bruno. She gets the tone, style and scale of her performance just right. If I Ain't Yo' Uncle were ever to become a solo show, Bruno would be the actor to hire.

I Ain't Yo' Uncle: The New Jack Revisionist Uncle Tom's Cabin runs through May 10th at The M Ensemble.