An Infectious Joy

“Black River Falls is at its heart a dark and serious play. It questions what it means to be religious: how you can follow a faith without questioning. It’s also a play about loss: Karper seems to find it difficult to accept that his sister has moved on in such a way to isolate herself from the rest of her family.

Karper plays all of the characters in the play and manages to deliver the one-man show with great enthusiasm and an infectious joy.  As himself, he creates a parody cowboy character not dissimilar to Woody from Toy Story. As Jennifer, he captures his sister’s mannerisms and hair styling perfectly. As Safet, Jennifer’s husband (a Muslim), he sang and portrayed life in Albania with great humour.

All these characters were also represented as ‘puppets’. Bob and his two sisters were Ken and Barbie dolls, their mother an old coffee pot, his dad a ship and Safet a soft fabric doll. It was a bit like watching a young kid playing, but the difference was that Karper was communicating some very serious messages about inter-cultural marriage. It was certainly an engaging approach!

I think for me, one of the most emotive points in the play was when Bob Karper was simply Bob Karper. Not the Woody character, not his sister, not Safet. Just him. He described a car journey he’d shared with his twin in which he’d tried to understand why she’d change her religion and thus her entire life approach for someone. What came through here very strongly was his clear sense of loss for the girl he’d shared a childhood with. She had fundamentally changed and it was hard to see how they could ever be close again.”

— Linda Jameson, Live Theatre Site