Raw, 3canal's 2015 Carnival offering, strutted out the seminal rapso triad's old ideologies in new, glittery packaging onto the Queen's Hall stage on February 5.
"Right now we raw, we real, we ready, we raw," the chorus lyrics of the song Raw exhort. In this, as well as the band's other new singles, Wendell Manwarren, Roger Roberts and Stanton Kewley declare that the times are serious, devoid of love, light and forgiveness.
The 3canal collective–for each show is a vigorous reminder that 3canal is an intellectual and cultural committee of artistic worker bees, not just three men–took to their proscenium with politically-fired vigour, as if to test the question: what new visions might be gleaned, in their Carnival show's 11th iteration?
An earnestly conducted pre-show, featuring the derivative but energetic soca stylings of Pac Juice 2.0, and the critically engaged but thinly substantiated rapso delivery of Osei Jackman, was notably lacking in women performers.
Theatre ran high at Raw: 3canal's team was determined to treat their audience to a pantomime worth its scripted weight in governmentally-misappropriated funds. The show was written by Wendell Manwarren and Penelope Spencer, with additional writing from Jelae Stroude-Mitchell and Elisha Bartels, and directed by Manwarren.
Act one was dominated by the heavy satirical and comedic efforts of the Big Love Party (BLP), led by Dr Pastor Franky LoRve (Marvin Dowridge). Dowridge excelled in his turbulent, power-addled portrayal of a political and religious figurehead fallen prey to the cocktail of his ambitious lust and avarice. Other strong cast members of the BLP were Cynthia Boxhill-Sparks (Jelae Stroude-Mitchell), a fishnet and boot-clad Murray Street prostitute ready to revolutionise the party with her marketable spirit, and Arnold Goindhan's Recovering Alcoholic character, who recycled all the tropes of the inebriate sage, but at least did so winningly.
Insofar as the actors' roles were to convey different archetypes in all the stages of human loneliness, desperation, revelation and harmonious discord–this they achieved within the strictures of a bloated and inconsistently rendered script. There was high emphasis on exaggerated slapstick thrills, with bemusing homophobic slur jokes thrown in for cheap laughs, proof that the show's scriptwriters know what tickles the funny bones of Trini audiences.
Sean Leonard's set and scenic design made intuitive and productive use of the Queen's Hall space. White cuboidal plinths were incorporated at the base of an elevated stage for use as stepping stones and small performance perches by both 3canal members and their dancing/acting crew.
Blue was the night's colour, and it shone forth with every revolutionary resonance intended, in the costume design of Meiling. Her couture administration saw the actors outfitted in blue T-shirts, dresses and lengths of waist-wrapped cloth, evocative of 3canal's admonition in Raw to "take a towel and ban yuh belly."
Celia Wells' lighting design made of Queen's Hall a complex kaleidoscopic interior, suggesting movement and hinting at an entire subnarrative told through light and its absence.
Perhaps it seems ungenerous to claim that kinetic energy was the spine of 3canal's musical performance, but Raw itself could be said to champion Alice Walker's sentiment that "hard times require furious dancing." With choreography by Deon Baptiste, and the dance captaincy of Ian Baptiste, the show's dancers shone, sweat-slicked, beneath the strobing lights, each performer a powerhouse of grace and tension. Equally immersed in their performative roles were the members of the cut + clear crew, who played indefatigably throughout the entire show, stationed at stage left.
Musically, which 3canal show is complete without Talk Yuh Talk? Manwarren, Roberts and Kewley sang and stomped their possibly-tired insurrectionist boots out, belting forth new material and old, but it's their classics that continued to reign supreme. Maybe the price of resoundingly felt revolutions is that their marching songs are often lyrically reductive and therefore disappointing, as is so much of 3canal's newer, post-millennial fare.
Raw was a spectacle of bombast and artfully mounted smoke and mirrors. In its execution, it left several symbolic ends untied and flapping loose with wilful, hyperbolic exaggeration. For all that, however, 3canal never pretends to be the pappyshows against which they rail, and if their messages grow weary, they are–unlike every governmental promise–delivered and disseminated with love.
Raw, the 3canal Show 2015, closed last night at Queen's Hall.
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More info:
Raw, the 3canal Show, featuring 3canal and others. Written by Wendell Manwarren and Penelope Spencer. Directed by Wendell Manwarren. Produced by cut + clear productions. Queen's Hall, St Ann's, from February 5- 8 and 12- 14.