Pe­ter Ray Blood

As the old say­ing goes, 'if it's nice, do it twice' so Fun­ny Farm Fac­to­ry & Ha Ha Ha Pro­duc­tions will reprise their sold out Talk Yuh Talk, Tri­ni Life, Love, Lies & Lock Up on June 7-9. Star­ring De­bra Bou­caud Ma­son, Nik­ki Cros­by, Ce­cil­ia Salazar, Pene­lope Spencer, Con­rad Par­ris, Kevon Brooks and Mar­lon Mot­t­ley, the laugh-a-minute pro­duc­tion was staged last week­end at Cen­tral Bank Au­di­to­ri­um, Port-of-Spain.

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Spencer, the pro­duc­tion was staged in two acts, com­pris­ing ten scenes, fused to­geth­er by cameo in­serts by the wiz­ened and lo­qua­cious Hottmouth Granny, played by Cros­by.

Friend­ly En­counter, fea­tur­ing Spencer and Salazar, was your per­fect ex­am­ple of "all skin teeth is not laugh," as their char­ac­ters, meet­ing to­geth­er at the fu­ner­al of Spencer's hus­band, for­mer­ly Salazar's, trans­mit­ted the true feel­ings they have car­ried around for each oth­er since school­days.

Spir­i­tu­al Ad­vi­sor placed the au­di­ence in a laugh­ing fit as Moth­er Sen­na (Bou­caud Ma­son) and Jack Brawn­er (Con­rad Par­ris) took cen­tre stage. The fall­en politi­cian seeks out the seer woman in the for­est at night to get her spir­i­tu­al in­ter­ven­tion to re­store him as a par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive and top in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball hon­cho. Brawn­er is ad­vised in this scene to form a new par­ty, as back­benchers are threat­en­ing to out­num­ber their col­leagues sit­ting in the front row of par­lia­ment.

Bou­caud Ma­son con­tin­ues to prove how thor­ough­ly she stud­ies and per­fects her char­ac­ter, her man­ner­isms and quips keep­ing her au­di­ence at the edge of its seat through­out.

De­bate, a po­lit­i­cal shoot out be­tween Mam­mala (Salazar) and Kei­th Grow­ley (Par­ris), with Bou­caud Ma­son as mod­er­a­tor sim­ply upped the hu­mour. In this skit Par­ris dis­played his ver­sa­til­i­ty and range as an ac­tor, an abil­i­ty which al­so land­ed him the role of the king in the just con­clud­ed The King & I.

Spencer's mono­logue in Ah Fed Up low­ered the hu­mour reg­is­ter a bit as the char­ac­ter rant­ed of her frus­tra­tions with hire pur­chase schemes from a pop­u­lar fur­ni­ture brand store.

Laugh­ter in­creased sev­er­al deci­bels for the fi­nal scene–School Daze are Hap­py Days. In this skit, Cros­by, Salazar, Bou­caud Ma­son and Spencer re­al­ly bring to the fore the full range of their act­ing ac­c­u­men as they por­tray school girls, each with a dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter.

Cros­by, as Shaki­ra, is the lit­tle hot­tie of the quar­tet, and gives no end of wor­ry to the sub­sti­tute teacher, played by Brooks.

The­atre crit­ics have scoffed at the pro­fu­sion of farces and comedic pro­duc­tions of­fered the lo­cal au­di­ence on an an­nu­al ba­sis, sug­gest­ing that "se­ri­ous" plays need to be staged.

These pro­duc­tions not just keep the wheels of the the­atre in­dus­try spin­ning, and of­fer much need­ed in­come to vir­tu­al im­pov­er­ished thes­pi­ans; they of­fer the pub­lic to a pos­i­tive and sat­is­fy­ing cul­tur­al and en­ter­tain­ment al­ter­na­tive. Pro­duc­ers like Choo Kong, Ra­goo­bars­ingh, Spencer, Cros­by and Gre­go­ry Singh must be com­pli­ment­ed for the body of work they con­sis­tent­ly of­fer a starved the­atre au­di­ence.

Con­tact­ed on this con­cern, Spencer said: "We ac­tors would re­al­ly love to do the se­ri­ous stuff but there's just no au­di­ence or mar­ket here for that kind of play. Tri­nis who go for the farce and com­e­dy far out­num­ber the oth­er type of the­atre au­di­ence. It might be a so­cial con­di­tion­ing thing as the state of our coun­try, and the world, has been grim and peo­ple need to be en­ter­tained by things that make them laugh."

De­serv­ing men­tion in this pro­duc­tion are cos­tume de­sign­ers Gre­go­ry Singh and Ian Smith, and its make up artists. Al­so de­serv­ing ac­claim is 3 Canal for pro­duc­ing a beau­ti­ful sound score.