Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
Comedian Oliver Samuels honours the late thespian Charles Hyatt at 'There Goes Charlie' a theatrical tribute to Charles Hyatt at the Little Theatre on Monday, January 15. - Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer
Personal and professional memories of Charles Hyatt, some of the music that the late actor loved and movement in honour of an icon who has moved off the stage of real life but remains in 'reel' life, trod the boards at the Little Theatre on Monday night. Hosted by Denise Hunt and Louis Marriott, the free event attracted a near full house, but not all stayed to clap, wave and 'praise him' with Roy Rayon and the Fabulous Five Incorporated Band at a few minutes past 11:00 p.m., as 'There Goes Charlie' sometimes dragged with speech for just over four hours.
Many performances
It was the speech, though, among the songs of Jimmy Tucker, Carole and David Reid, Lovindeer and Gem Myers, the music of Marjorie Whylie, Kemar Garrison, Seymour 'Foggy' Mullings, Ernie Ranglin, Sonny Bradshaw and Mickey Hanson and the movement of Neila Ebanks, Lawrence Pinder of L'Acadco and the Wolmer's Dance Troupe, complemented by big kid Oliver Samuels, that contained the classic Charlie moments.
Alma Mockyen reminded all that in 1959 Hyatt rode a scooter from Hope Botanic Gardens to Blue Mountain Peak and quoted him from a 1995 interview about the mass dismissal of Jamaica Broadcasting Commission (JBC) staff inn the 1980s. "It was a political purge, pure and simple," Hyatt said. Wycliffe Bennett said the death of Charles Hyatt, coming after the deaths of Neville Willoughby and Perry Henzell, marks the end of an era in the development of the performing arts in Jamaica. And, as Charles said, there are no small parts, only small actors. You can triumph in two minutes and fail in two hours. "Is long time me know Bully. An if yu know him as Bully yu know him long time," Fitz Weir said. "A lot of people don't know that Charlie is a very good cook."
Light on everyone
Sydney Bartley put Hyatt's death in the context of Jamaica's 44rd Independence celebrations, Garvey's 120th birthday and the 100th anniversary of the Kingston earthquake, adding, "He shed a light on everyone around him." Fae Ellington placed a phone call to Hyatt about the upcoming 2007 Reggae Soca Awards in Miami, questioning, "I wonder why him not talking to me? Yu up to one of yu pranks." It was the start of a pictorial flashback on an event they co-hosted for 12 years, including pictures of them with Buju Banton and Riche Stephens, Ellington closing her narration of the visual presentation with, "He who laugh last laugh best. A ketch yu. Rahtid! Him laugh las!" And Leonie Forbes recalled the London antics of a "multitalented, multifaceted individual, the likes of which we may not see again for a very long time." There was a sojurn to the Brixton market and, on the way back via train, Hyatt started to mime an African man reading his newspaper, finishing off by crowning him with a paper bag emptied of market purchases. In the end, when they got off, "The train door closed like a curtain on his impromptu performance." Then there were the occasions when Forbes and Harvey would go on the upper deck of a London bus and speak gibberish to each other, pretending to be Africans.
"Regrettably, it is no longer a case of 'here come Charlie' but 'there goes Charlie'. But I know he would want us to make something funny out of this," Forbes said, doing some of the 'African' to laughter.
"Behave Charlie Hyatt, wherever yu deh, or dem going to ban yu from de upper deck," Leonie Forbes said.
