3Canal cel­e­brat­ed 25 years in the busi­ness ear­li­er this week with its pro­duc­tion of Zin­gay­ta­lala, a three-show se­ries, at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s.

In true 3Canal style, mem­bers Wen­dell Man­war­ren, Stan­ton Kew­ley and Roger Roberts gave the pa­trons who turned out over the three shows a well thought out, chore­o­graphed and pro­duced event.

Built around a look in­to the his­to­ry of the Car­ni­val, which was pre­sent­ed by a sto­ry­telling team which in­clud­ed vet­er­an per­former Ce­cil­ia Salazar, Arnold Goind­han, Mar­vin Dowridge, Kim­my Stoute-Robin­son and Randy Stan­ley, the show, more im­por­tant­ly, took pa­trons on a jour­ney of the group’s mu­si­cal progress through the years.

Known for their the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions, 3Canal did not dis­ap­point ei­ther, keep­ing the pa­trons en­grossed from the time they rose out of the venue low­er lev­el on the stage to end, when they gave fans a taste of some of the hits which made them house­holds names over two decades ago. While they may be go­ing down in age, as any en­ti­ty cel­e­brat­ing 25 years would sug­gest, Man­war­ren, Kew­ley and Roberts have not lost their usu­al flair and went the full mile in de­liv­er­ing this vigour dur­ing the three-day run.

On the oth­er side, the sto­ry­tellers al­so gave a poignant com­men­tary on how the Car­ni­val has been over­tak­en by an elit­ist group of in­di­vid­u­als now bent more on gen­er­at­ing wealth than putting the pow­er of ex­pres­sion through un­fet­tered rev­el­ry in the hand of the rev­ellers. It is an is­sue which is of­ten dis­cussed with­in the cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty but very rarely makes it as far as a stage in the man­ner the sto­ry­telling crew did it.

All in all, it was a pro­duc­tion in line with pre­vi­ous 3Canal Car­ni­val pro­duc­tions.

But for those pa­trons who missed it this week and by de­mand, 3 Canal is putting on two more last lap shows next week (Febu­rary 26 and 27) at the same venue start­ing at 8.30 each night.