Wes­ley Gib­bings

Be­lin­da Barnes' in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Dou­glas Archibald's time­less 1962 play The Rose Slip would not have stood a chance against top-billed Jab Mo­lassie across at Lit­tle Carib and The Wiz at Queen's Hall on the week­end of No­vem­ber 8 and 9, had not the UTT Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts al­ready had a grow­ing fol­low­ing in­ter­est­ed in some of the younger, brighter stars of the lo­cal stage.

No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott once la­belled the Archibald play "mi­nor-key dra­ma," but it's clear­ly more than an every­day back­yard farce. The play's pace and flavour res­onat­ed with the Cen­tral Bank au­di­ence just as eas­i­ly as it would have more than 50 years ago, and its un­can­ny re­minders of con­tem­po­rary alien­ation and de­spair are per­va­sive.

The strength of the play has al­ways been its bru­tal hon­esty–its un­fet­tered por­tray­al of the lives of some every­day poor folks back in the late 50s, por­tray­ing a re­al­i­ty that has en­dured through the decades in pop­u­lar par­lance, style and tone. Lit­tle won­der The Rose Slip re­turns to the Caribbean stage again and again.

The young UTT thes­pi­ans ap­peared com­fort­able with their roles and the di­a­logue flowed ef­fort­less­ly. In more cas­es than not, comedic tim­ing was spot on.

"She was so dead," says one Mr Buck­et, "that we had to bury her fast and have the wake af­ter."

There is no mod­ern-day app for that.

Flossie (Eu­ge­nio Lemo) and Su­san­na (An­drea Co­dring­ton) are ten­e­ment-yard neigh­bours con­fronting the re­al­i­ty of pover­ty and of­fi­cial ne­glect.

There is as much tragedy as there are laughs. Su­san­na is a sin­gle par­ent of two in a sub­urb of Port-of-Spain. Flossie is her sin­gle neigh­bour who some­times in­vites the jit­tery scamp and neigh­bour Gus (Tyler Peloi) to her bed but who al­so wouldn't mind a child of her own.

In fact, when young neigh­bour Eva (Charis­sa Sealey), who is egged on by Gus to do so, de­cides she has had enough of job-hunt­ing and de­cides to take up a lu­cra­tive po­si­tion at "the club," Flossie tries to talk her out of it and in­vites her to move in if she los­es her flat for lack of mon­ey. Eva walks away not on­ly from Flossie, but from a fu­ture that ap­pears just as per­ilous and as hope­less as her life in a new role as a pros­ti­tute.

Then there's Mr Buck­et, mas­ter­ful­ly played by Jovon Browne, who even­tu­al­ly suc­cumbs to an un­will­ing bath ad­min­is­tered by Su­san­na and Flossie, who use Gus as a de­coy be­fore they grab the old, smelly Mr Buck­et and cart him off be­hind the shacks for a bath.

Near the yard, there's a busy high­way to which the neigh­bour­hood rush­es each time there is a crash–mea­sured in in­ten­si­ty by the num­ber of ca­su­al­ties and ve­hi­cles in­volved and the qual­i­ty of boun­ty left mo­men­tar­i­ly strewn across the road be­fore a cu­ri­ous, needy crowd emerges. Per­haps there's po­lit­i­cal com­men­tary in this. That's for the au­di­ence to work out.

Flossie, the main char­ac­ter, an­chors the sto­ry­line through­out. It is a dif­fi­cult task for Lemo, last seen by this writer in El­speth Dun­can's ab­sur­dist play The Per­fect Place, and in Chris­tine Men­zies' in­ter­pre­ta­tion of As You Like It –how­ev­er chal­leng­ing the lat­ter two roles. Hers is an ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent de­vel­op­ing well through dif­fi­cult roles tran­scend­ing dif­fer­ent the­atri­cal gen­res.

Ce­leste For­tune, in her role as Ara­bel­la, the cranky, in­ca­pac­i­tat­ed old moth­er of Su­san­na, al­so achieves some of the comedic highs of the play: plain old-fash­ioned slap­stick and dou­ble-en­ten­dre. But that's fine.

The play opens with a good old-time whip­ping ad­min­is­tered to Abel (Lev­ee Ro­driguez) by Su­san­na. This is mi­nor-key the­atre. San­ti­man­i­tay!

Now that the oth­er more fash­ion­able and grand dra­mat­ic fare is out of the way, there's per­haps scope for an en­core.

Hope­ful­ly, as well, the UTT pro­gramme makes pro­vi­sion for con­tin­u­ous men­tor­ing be­yond un­der­grad­u­ate study. Lemo, For­tune, Co­dring­ton, Browne, Sealey et al can­not be lost to the Caribbean stage.

Peo­ple like Barnes, Men­zies, Michael Cher­rie, Er­rol Sita­hal and oth­ers can ad­vise on how ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult and cost­ly but pos­si­ble it has been.

George Bovell's col­umn Re­flec­tions off the Wa­ter will re­turn next week.