A Review of Sunday Dinner by Caleen Sinnette

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A Review of Sunday Dinner by Caleen Sinnette

Sunday Dinner is a one-act play written by Caleen Sinnette Jennings.

It is a comedy written in 1993. It is set in the Morgan family home.

An elegant old house which stands in what once was a beautiful,

upper-class Black neighbourhood. Inside, the Morgan home has all its

original furnishings, meticulously and loveingly cared for. The living

room where most of the story takes place is a picture of life in

another age. A settee, an overstuffed chair, doilies, an antique table

with framed family pictures on it, ornate lamps, family portraits on

the walls. The room is cluttered, somewhat somber and in need of

painting.

Charl (Charlene) Morgan, Nat (Natrelle) Morgan and Ray (Rayette) James

are three African- American sisters who live extremely different

lives. Nat, the eldest, is a teacher who lives for the church and

preserves the family home as a monument to their decreased mother.

Ray, the middle one, is a home maker. She has two toddlers at home,

Ronnie and Paul, and is pregnant again, with an unemployed husband.

Charl, the youngest, is an up and coming TV reporter, living in the

fast lane. She is always out late at night coming in at all hours of

the morning and is mad about aerobics. After a long period of

estrangement, the three come together for Sunday Dinner in their

childhood home. Nat prays, Charl does aerobics, and Ray shows off

pictures of her children, as each test the possibility of

reconciliation.

Caleen Sinnette Jennings is a student of William Shakespeare, August

Wilson, Sam Shepard and Lorraine Hansberry. In the early 1970s who,

after years of speech and drama and S...

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...ass neighbourhood and the Johnstones in Blood Brothers

are also upper-class. The main characters in both plays (Ray, Nat,

Charl, Eddie, Mickey) are people that we can relate to, we feel pathos

with them as they face the trials and tribulations of life. Russell

uses pathos to involve the readers so they feel pity when Mickey loses

his job, fear at the end of the play when the shooting scene takes

place, and experience childhood joy when Eddie and Mickey share jokes.

Humour, in its various forms, plays a large part in bothn Blood

Brothers and Sunday Dinner. It keeps the readers interested and

balances out the conflict and sadness in the play. Also both plays are

composed of fairly simple storylines. There is nothing too difficult

to understand which helps the audience to stay focused and feel more

involved with the play.

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