Soon, she is back in her office where a repo company is hauling away every stick of furniture and equipment.
Her best friend gives the suddenly impoverished Undine the brush-off, and the now homeless, unemployed woman has no choice but to take the subway to the Brooklyn housing projects where her parents, brother, and grandmother still live. Grandma, it turns out, has a heroin habit, and when Undine agrees to go out and buy a bag, she is arrested and hauled before a judge. It’s a dizzying fall from grace, and its fabulated hyperbole is what makes it so fun to watch. It’s Chaucer’s story of Constance the shipwrecked princess combined with the Bible’s story of Job and Voltaire’s tale of Candide. There’s something inherently dramatic in watching the powerful become powerless, the comfortable become uncomfortable, all their assumptions shattered. To watch Belcon trade in her designer dresses for a purple sweatshirt as Undine sits in a molded plastic chair at a drug-counseling session or stands in line at a social-services agency is to understand how easily one way of life can become another. (2/4/2009) An Absent Older Brother’s Gift to His Younger Sibling Adds Color to An Otherwise Perfunctory Life (2/11/2009) Towson Jazz Alumnus Returns to Teach and Perform At His Alma Mater
© 2009 Baltimore City Paper