Pe­ter Ray Blood

The writ­ing abil­i­ty of Richard Ra­goo­bars­ingh is again ob­vi­ous in Lot­to Mad­ness, one of his past works reprised last week at Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um in Port-of-Spain. The at­tor­ney/play­wright, whose CV in­cludes the crit­i­cal­ly ac­claimed Mary Could Dance, shows in this work his skill at pre­sent­ing a comedic piece that in­cludes very se­ri­ous moral and so­cial is­sues.Ini­tial­ly staged 13 years ago, Lot­to Mad­ness is graced by a strong cast that in­cludes De­bra Bou­caud Ma­son (Gillian Bruce); Car­o­line Tay­lor (An­na Lucky); Leslie Anne Lavine (Aman­da Sanchez); Glenn Davis (Rus­sel Ab­erdeen); and, Ra­goo­bars­ingh (Mar­lon Lucky).

Play­ing the Lucky's feisty maid, Bou­caud Ma­son was ac­tu­al­ly cast­ed in this role 13 years ago, one for which she won the Cacique Award for Best Sup­port­ing Ac­tress. Like in so many oth­er roles, the most re­cent as Moth­er Sen­na in Fun­ny Farm/Ha Ha Ha Pro­duc­tion's Talk Yuh Talk, she nails this one again.Tay­lor is ex­cel­lent as Mar­lon Lucky's wife An­na. She suc­ceeds in cap­tur­ing the time worn per­cep­tion of "con­vent girls" be­ing naive and steeped in the re­li­gious mores of Catholi­cism, but is for­ti­fied by her out­spo­ken and brash maid, al­so pre­sent­ed as a stereo­type of a street smart me­nial work­er from Laven­tille.

In her role, Tay­lor has raised her hand to be a wor­thy con­tender for the Best Ac­tress fig­urine in this year's Cacique Awards.Aman­da Sanchez is An­na's el­der sis­ter and it soon be­comes ob­vi­ous that these women come from a dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly, one with a his­to­ry of do­mes­tic abuse and men­tal prob­lems. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween these sib­lings has a stark sim­i­lar­i­ty to the one por­trayed be­tween the char­ac­ters played by the late Whit­ney Hous­ton and US Vir­gin Is­land co-star Michelle Lamar Richards in the movie The Body­guard.

Gillian, who has a deep-seat­ed dis­like for Aman­da, con­vinces An­na to hire her "cousin," pri­vate de­tec­tive Rus­sel Ab­erdeen, to in­ves­ti­gate her hus­band. Ab­erdeen's, whose trade­mark slo­gan is "I'm for hire, can prove he's a liar," is a zany char­ac­ter.Ra­goo­bars­ingh is suc­cess­ful in high­light­ing that greed and love of mon­ey are ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful in­duce­ments to test one's re­li­gious in­doc­tri­na­tion, moral virtues and fi­deli­ty, with mur­der­ous in­tent and con­se­quences. Lot­to Mad­ness is a must-see pro­duc­tion, with a great script and equal­ly su­perb act­ing.Lot­to Mad­ness will be re­peat­ed on June 14-15 at Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do, at 8.30 pm.