By Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterWESTERN BUREAU:
FROM SCREEN and stage, with words and body language, Lloyd Reckord fused poetry and drama at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts on Sunday night.
Those who turned out to the Studio Theatre at the Arthur Wint Drive, St. Andrew, college were treated to a well delivered selection of poetic standards including Derek Walcott's Adios Carenage, which did double duty as the production's title.
It was perhaps appropriate, then, that Reckord did not sit on his sole prop, a piano stool, until that poem, the ninth, which began the second segment of the five-part production. Entitled Flight, it was preceded by Home and followed by Nature, Abuse and, finally, Death.
ONE-MAN PRESENTATION
The one-man presentation may have been minimalist in approach on the stage, but with a healthy serving of the poetry coming from a screen at the rear of the stage, Reckord dove headfirst into his dramatic side on film. Reckord the homeless man used Reckord the businessman as the basis of Mutabaruka's A Siddung Pon De Wall and Edward Brathwaite's Rites was set in a tailor's shop, with Reckord as the owner of the establishment and Owen 'Blacka' Ellis doing a no-account idler.
There were pieces from the screen, though, in which Reckord was heard but not seen. A pair of cartoon characters was appropriate for James Berry's Dialogue Between Two Large Women and a woman played the unwilling lover to the hilt in Barbara Ferland's Expect No Turbulence.
And there was a touching end to the on-screen clips of murder scenes which formed the background to Martin Carter's This Is A Dark Time My Love, when a woman moaned "dem cyan kill off people pickney so".
It was Reckord, though, who took the on-screen performance to its dramatic limit with Frank Collymore's Roman Holiday, in drag and made up to sag as an older woman, rocking in a chair, remembering a funeral mix up of venue and all.
With three Louise Bennett poems, Is Me, Roas Turkey and Colonisation In Reverse, in the production, all coming before the interval, Reckord explained that he was a great fan of the great lady and that she had great fun poking fun at the then leader of the opposition.
Similarly, the audience had great fun with Louise Bennett's work which, in Reckord's experienced hands, was far removed from the screeching which often passes for renditions of her poetry.
With the Home and Flight sections coming before the intermission, the pace picked up appreciably and maybe ironically so with Nature, Abuse and Death. With Colonisation in Reverse bringing up the interval, Reckord commented wryly that "of course, those were the days. These days, if you want to do any colonisation you have to get a visa by queuing up in the hot sun on Trafalgar Road for hours. Best of luck".
Reckord's body language was superb, from the cringing visa applicant in Edward Baugh's Nigger Sweat to the unapologetic farmer in Song Of The Banana Man, but in Walt de Legall's Elegy For A Lady he upped the ante. Starting out crouched, with a single spotlight on him, he went through a range of emotions before ending frozen in horror beside the stool.
DICTION
His diction was controlled; there was emphasis without screaming, passion without outburst, with excellent pace to boot. This came through especially well on Bongo Jerry's Mabrak.
And even when a child disturbed the darkness as he was getting ready to switch scenes, it was with control that he growled "will someone get that child out of here!"
With good but not gaudy lighting, as well as appropriate music from the film clips, Reckord kept the audience involved right up to the final piece, James Weldon Johnson's Go Down Death.
Adios Carenage, a production of The National Theatre Trust in association with Reckord Films, runs on weekends to April 3.
