One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show

One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show takes place in suburban Philadelphia, where the Reverend Avery Harrison, a Baptist preacher, clings tenaciously to his position in the local black elite. His upwardly mobile philosophy is avisly shared by his wife, Myra (whose hilarious malapropisms continually betray her ghetto origins), and his son Felix, a strictly brought up private school product who has suddenly discovered the joys of sex, thanks to a surreptitiously studied manual and the cooperation of a local charmer known as “Li’l Bit’s”. Another jarring note is struck when the Reverend’s countrified niece Beverly, the only daughter of his lately demised brother, arrives from the rural South with the news that she has been left in the custody of Caled Johnson, a jive talking, fast living, macho type, who was the partner of Beverly’s father in a disreputable local nightclub. Hilarious complications ensue as the Reverend and his wife find their passions rekindled; Felix and “Li’l Bit’s” nervously face the prospect that she may be in a “family way”; and Beverly — who is a lot sharper than her country background might suggest — plots her conquest of the increasingly helpless Caleb.