Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

The 3Canal Show re­mains the best stage show, bar none, for Trinidad Car­ni­val. In its tenth year it demon­strates yet again how a show should be run, with sharp stage pre­sen­ta­tion, de­sign and front of house all adding up to a great au­di­ence ex­pe­ri­ence. This year's show, Planass, al­so fea­tures ex­cep­tion­al vi­su­al ap­peal through cun­ning light­ing de­sign and the clever use of a choir as hu­man back­drop to the per­for­mance of the show's stars, the rap­so trio 3Canal.

The show opened last Sun­day and closed last night at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. Con­ceived as a chimeri­cal blend­ing of mas, mu­sic, dance and the­atre, it has sought every year to bring a new in­ter­pre­ta­tion to the mix­ture. This year ac­tors Pene­lope Spencer, Arnold Goind­han, Con­rad Par­ris and Ce­cil­ia Salazar are once again a kind of bur­lesque cho­rus fram­ing the con­cert that is the main at­trac­tion of the show. Per­form­ing a script co-writ­ten by Pene­lope Spencer and 3Canal front man and show di­rec­tor Wen­dell Man­war­ren, the name­less char­ac­ters car­i­ca­ture var­i­ous el­e­ments of so­ci­ety: the al­co­holic East In­di­an, the feisty poor black woman, the an­gry black in­tel­lec­tu­al, the rich white house­wife. They drop ref­er­ences to cur­rent af­fairs in mono­logues about the "fat cats" and po­lit­i­cal par­a­sites in our coun­try, and in­cite the au­di­ence to take ac­tion against in­jus­tice and cor­rup­tion.

3Canal as a mu­si­cal act is known for its po­lit­i­cal­ly charged lyrics, and the cho­rus riffs on that; how­ev­er, the di­a­logue, while fun­ny some­times, is of­ten heavy-hand­ed and te­dious. It is re­deemed by the ac­tors' in­cor­po­ra­tion of tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ters in their in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the car­i­ca­tures: there's a mid­night rob­ber in Par­ris' in­tel­lec­tu­al, a dame lor­raine in Spencer's black woman, a tourist An­nie in Salazar's rich woman, a drunk­en sailor in Goind­han's rum jumbie.Where Planass re­al­ly shines is in the con­cert seg­ment. It was tru­ly breath­tak­ing to see the band the Cut + Clear Crew emerge from the or­ches­tra pit on a ris­ing plat­form and Man­war­ren, Roger Roberts and Stan­ton Kew­ley, 3Canal's voic­es, take cen­tre stage in front of a choir of near­ly 40 mem­bers. The first set has the choir in black T-shirts with a va­ri­ety of strik­ing geo­met­ric de­signs as Celia Wells' daz­zling light­ing ef­fects sparkle and strobe across them. In the sec­ond, the band, lead singers and choir are in rain­bow-coloured cos­tumes, mak­ing an even bold­er vi­su­al state­ment. It works, bring­ing a rock-con­cert ex­pe­ri­ence to a Car­ni­val show.

Dancers and singers com­prised the choir, the Ce­les­tial Rap­so War­rior An­gels, led by di­va Glen­da Col­lens. In Mon­day's show, it was of­ten hard to hear the choir from the back of the hall, but when they were au­di­ble they added a spe­cial oomph to the mu­sic. Es­pe­cial­ly ef­fec­tive were the im­pro­vi­sa­tion­al solo­ing by Joseph Lopez and Juelle Archer dur­ing the song Know Your Rights, and the haunt­ing melodies sung dur­ing Sac­ri­fice.The 3Canal Show has al­ways in­clud­ed ex­cep­tion­al danc­ing but this year the Ce­les­tial Rap­so War­rior An­gels es­sen­tial­ly re­cy­cled chore­og­ra­phy from a pre­vi­ous year's show and danced on the spot for most of the songs. It was far from aw­ful, but it was a small dis­ap­point­ment, as the chore­og­ra­phy and danc­ing have al­ways been to me among the most an­tic­i­pat­ed el­e­ments of the show.But, all things con­sid­ered, the 3Canal Show is al­ways worth the price of ad­mis­sion and more.