Si­mon Lee

Derek Wal­cott's lat­est play O Star­ry Star­ry Night pre­miered at Es­sex Uni­ver­si­ty' Lake­side The­atre on May 3 with Tri­ni ac­tors Nigel Scott and Wen­dell Man­war­ren lead­ing the cast along with UK-based com­pa­tri­ots Mar­ti­na Laird and Bri­an Green.

Wal­cott's writ­ing, whether po­et­ry or dra­ma, has been in­flu­enced by vi­su­al art through­out his long ca­reer. He him­self is a keen wa­ter­colourist and it is the artist's eye as much as the lit­er­ate writer's lex­i­con, which has in­formed his unique im­agery. So his choice of sub­ject mat­ter-the stormy re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Post-Im­pres­sion­ist painters Vin­cent van Gogh and Paul Gau­guin�is un­der­stand­able; more­so when we delve in­to Gau­guin's back­ground. His moth­er was of Pe­ru­vian ex­trac­tion and the young Paul spent five years of his ear­ly life in Li­ma, be­fore re­turn­ing to France. The year be­fore the 1888 time frame of the play, Gau­guin, had spent time in a hut out­side St Pierre in Mar­tinique fol­low­ing an abortive cou­ple of weeks' labour on the Pana­ma Canal. Af­ter the nine week so­journ in Ar­les, south­ern France with van Gogh, his lat­ter days in Poly­ne­sia were fic­tion­alised by an­oth­er No­bel Lau­re­ate, the Pe­ru­vian Mario Var­gas Llosa, in his nov­el The Way to Par­adise.

The ti­tle of the play ref­er­ences van Gogh's most fa­mous paint­ing, ex­e­cut­ed dur­ing his hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion for the same break­down which saw him threat­en Gau­guin with a ra­zor blade and end­ed with him cut­ting off his low­er ear lobe and giv­ing it to an Ar­les pros­ti­tute.

Con­tact­ed to­wards the end of in­tense re­hearsals, Scott and Man­war­ren gra­cious­ly took some time out for a joint cy­ber in­ter­view. They pin­point the dy­nam­ics dri­ving the dra­ma: "The two artists spend nine weeks at Ar­les at the height of their cre­ative pow­ers. Per­haps this was the most pro­lif­ic and pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion in the his­to­ry of Art. It was a crit­i­cal point in their ca­reers, both were search­ing for new ways to ex­press them­selves via paint­ing."

Both Scott (who plays van Gogh's broth­er Theo who act­ed as agent for both artists) and Man­war­ren (who plays Gau­guin) have re­searched (and doubt­less been in­struct­ed by the play­wright him­self) the two artists' tra­jec­to­ries: "The two men were on a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery; Vin­cent trav­elled to the South of France to find the sun and Gau­guin had been to Mar­tinique to use the trop­ics as his back­drop. Their sep­a­rate quests brought them to the re­al­i­sa­tion that they might con­tribute to each oth­er's de­vel­op­ment. Both were seek­ing their own truths through their art. When Gau­guin has some ear­ly suc­cess and Vin­cent's work is not sell­ing (He on­ly sold one paint­ing dur­ing his life­time), this cre­ates a ten­sion in the re­la­tion­ship that even­tu­al­ly cul­mi­nates in the lat­ter's men­tal break­down."

One could view the Gau­guin-van Gogh col­li­sion as the old di­choto­my be­tween body and mind�the sen­su­al­ist Gau­guin and the angst-rid­den van Gogh. Scott and Man­war­ren elab­o­rate: "Gau­guin re­mon­strates with Vin­cent at one point: 'For­get the meta­physics and just paint. He is tired of the con­stant ref­er­ences to the spir­i­tu­al and shuns the Church...He is about the flesh and con­veys this in his work. Al­though the two men of­ten paint­ed the same sub­jects, the dif­fer­ent philoso­phies of­ten came through in their in­ter­pre­ta­tions."

Both artists sac­ri­ficed con­ven­tion for cre­ation, and their re­jec­tion of re­stric­tive bour­geois norms and ul­ti­mate iso­la­tion is a theme which must be close to Wal­cott's heart. As the ac­tors note: "Vin­cent was al­ways con­sid­ered ec­cen­tric if not mad...Gau­guin gave up a con­ven­tion­al life in favour of his art. Both suf­fered tremen­dous de­pri­va­tion and pain to pur­sue their craft."

Both long­stand­ing mem­bers of Wal­cott's Trinidad The­atre Work­shop Scott and Man­war­ren agree that their most chal­leng­ing role to date was as Don Juan in Wal­cott's Jok­er of Seville (they both played the ti­tle role in pro­duc­tions 20 years apart) "Be­cause it chal­lenged and stretched the ac­tor to act, sing, dance and fight for two and a half hours straight at full speed." O Star­ry Star­ry Night pos­es a new chal­lenge to Man­war­ren, as it's his "first op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op a char­ac­ter that lived."

The duo ac­knowl­edged the "to­tal im­mer­sion and fo­cus on the work" of all those in­volved in the Lake­side The­atre pro­duc­tion, con­clud­ing "It is on­ly fit­ting we re­spond in like man­ner and do jus­tice to the pro­duc­tion by bring­ing all our tal­ent and skill to bear so we make its au­thor proud through our per­for­mances."