Mel Cooke, Freelance WriterTHERE WAS a merry addition to the sound of traffic on Constant Spring Road, St. Andrew, on Monday night, as gales of laughter were flung into the night-time sky from the rooftop, open-air Priscilla's.
The show, staged on the last Monday of every month, is named 'Laugh Again', but the most recent staging could have used the second word like a recurring decimal, as the humour peaked repeatedly through the humour of Charles Hyatt and Dennis 'Spragalang' Hall from Trinidad.
And there was even 'brawta', as the night's host, musician Micheal 'Ibo' Cooper, turned in much more than his fair share of chuckles as he tried, mainly without success but with good humour, to get members of the audience to pitch in a few jokes of their own.
FERTILE GROUND
Cooper, who now teaches at the School of Music, Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, seems to have found the classroom fertile ground for more than grooming young musicians. He got off a few about the talent he is
sometimes faced with ("One lady asked if her son was good at the piano. I told her he has fingers like lightning. You mean he is fast? No, they don't strike in the same place twice.")
Charles Hyatt asked pardon for voice problems, as "for the last week I have been under a doctor. And trust me, she good."
With the stiff breeze of that strong start billowing his sails, Hyatt never looked back as he delved into a bit of 'folkery' of the funny kind, including an encounter with a modern
bathroom, as he deposited his nervousness before facing
immigration in the United States. One lady who got up while he was on the toilet topic was advised to "wash yu han' before yu come back," to the amusement of the audience.
However, the laughter at Hyatt's encounter with the
new-fangled faucets and urinals became comic convulsions at his graphic descriptions of close encounters with the 'outhouse' pit toilet of old.
FLYING START
'Laugh Again' went
international with Spragalang from Trinidad. Sustained howls of laughter and consistent
chuckles were testimony to the success of his extended
performance.
Previous glitches with the sound system were addressed and he went off to a flying start literally describing why he was reluctant to take a plane.
He graphically described the activities of the ladies who behave like 'traffic police' as they give instructions about
what to do in the case of an emergency. Then "when I lan'
in de ocean, a light light up an'tell the shark sey me here!" Spragalang said incredulously.
Trinidad and Jamaica are not that different, as Spragalang illustrated class competition through flying of a different sort, when a man bailed out of a plane and pulled the parachute cord. As he was gently floating down, another man who did not remember what to do went hurtling by on his way to earth.
"Oh, yu want to race!" the man with the open parachute said, taking it off, determined to catch up.
The laughs came thick and fast, Spragalang causing
pandemonium as he spoke about a man trying obeah to be with a woman. The obeah worker asked for a strand of her hair, which the man duly delivered and at the appointed hour, as promised, the owner of the hair turned up at his gate.
It was a horse, as she had been wearing a weave.
Cooper had the last lick
for the night, an all laughed out audience trekking down the steps from Priscilla's with a promise to 'Laugh Again'
on the last Monday of next month.
