Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

On March 6 the Trinidad The­atre Work­shop (TTW) pre­sent­ed a screen­play read­ing of Crab­man and Sand­bird, a film script co-au­thored by nov­el­ist Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj and ac­tor Er­rol Sita­hal. This marked the TTW's first pro­duc­tion for 2013. The set­ting was an in­for­mal one, with au­di­ence and script read­ers alike as­sem­bled in a rough cir­cle around the mid­dle of the the­atre's stage. No podi­ums, spe­cial light­ing or stage di­rec­tions were ob­served, as the ac­tors read from print­ed copies of the script, of­ten paus­ing to fa­mil­iarise them­selves with lines, or to pro­vide side­line com­men­tary on things the char­ac­ters might have said or done.

Crab­man (read by Michael Cher­rie), a griz­zled re­tired stick­fight­er, res­cues a young Cana­di­an boy from drown­ing. He calls the boy Sand­bird, and hous­es him in his mea­gre home. While the pair slow­ly and shak­i­ly builds up an in­tense bond, the oth­er vil­lagers have much to say about this un­con­ven­tion­al, blos­som­ing friend­ship.Among them are Madale­na (read by Ce­cil­ia Salazar), Crab­man's for­mer love in­ter­est; Goose, the blus­ter­ing, young cham­pi­on stick­fight­er (read by Arnold Goind­han); and Pap­pin, the bum­bling po­lice of­fi­cer. As stick­fight­ing sea­son ap­proach­es, and more of Crab­man's old, buried ghosts be­come dredged up, what will this tor­tured, for­mer­ly iso­lat­ed man do to fi­nal­ly bury the past?

If one of the pri­ma­ry pur­pos­es of the TTW read­ing se­ries is to gauge how well a script might stand up to full-fledged pro­duc­tion, then Crab­man and Sand­bird is al­ready a suc­cess. It pep­pered the au­di­ence with equal dos­es of ri­otous laugh­ter and som­bre in­tro­spec­tion. Ma­haraj and Sita­hal have en­gi­neered the di­a­logue to be at once cut­ting and calm­ing: to re­veal un­set­tling and sad truths about Trinida­di­an so­ci­ety, about the hu­man con­di­tion, while keep­ing one from wal­low­ing in the de­spair this might prompt. The project re­ceived a 2012 Pro­duc­tion As­sis­tance and Script De­vel­op­ment grant from the T&T Film Co.

The script is geared to­wards a se­ries of gen­tle, yet breath­tak­ing rev­e­la­tions, and feels im­bued with res­o­nant vi­su­al im­agery at near­ly every turn. Char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is deft­ly han­dled–no one, from rumshop crone to the sto­ic, cu­ri­ous­ly po­et­ic Crab­man him­self–speaks in­con­sis­tent­ly or with bor­rowed, clum­sy dic­tion. Por­traits of an un­for­giv­ing yet cap­ti­vat­ing land­scape abound: the sea her­self is held up as an im­por­tant, silent char­ac­ter, mer­ci­less in what she takes from hu­man be­ings who un­der­es­ti­mate her pow­er, as Crab­man has learned to his own sor­row.

What jars, how­ev­er, is that this is a laud­able script writ­ten by two sep­a­rate au­thors, and its di­vi­sions of style, pac­ing and ex­pres­sion are ev­i­dent. So far Crab­man and Sand­bird strikes one as a dis­cor­dant mas­ter­piece that hasn't quite found its poise; it shifts, of­ten abrupt­ly, be­tween nar­ra­tive per­spec­tives of sweep­ing, all-en­com­pass­ing de­scrip­tion, and longer, ac­tion-fu­elled se­quences where scant to no stage di­rec­tion in­trudes.

At times, its lush or­na­men­ta­tion runs up hard and clum­si­ly against a clean­er, more eco­nom­i­cal slant to the pre­sen­ta­tion of char­ac­ters and themes. A re­turn to the writ­ing process seems im­mi­nent, there­fore, in pol­ish­ing Crab­man and Sand­bird for its ul­ti­mate pur­pose: to make a film to en­thrall and beau­ti­ful­ly sad­den au­di­ences at home and abroad.