From left, Maylynne Walton, Charlene Coore and Kristina Newman portray crack whores in 'The Pretty & The Poison', which was written and directed by Walton. - Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer
CONSIDERING THE practically incestuous nature of Jamaican theatre, the Fake Players: The Children of the Doubt Revolution will not be considered when the annual Actor Boy awards roll around next year, which in some ways is not a bad thing.
Granted, even if they were considered they would probably not deserve to win anything for their first production, Brain Mints, which was staged three times at Redbones the Blues Café, Belmont Road, New Kingston last week. Their subject matter and their take on the same would probably not be palatable to the persons who hand the awards out, but the ensemble deserves kudos for attempting to take Jamaican theatre in a bold, different direction.
The Fake Players: The Children of the Doubt Revolution, consist of Bruce Alexander, Soul Case's Omar Francis and Gordon Scott, Maylynne Walton (of Ammars advertisements and Royal Palm Estate fame), artist and media personality Kristina Newman, Charlene Coore, Charlene Easton, Maxine Hall, Tiffany Recas, Rico Walton and Arrianne Williams. Brain Mints is their first production, the only member with any drama experience being Walton.
Brain Mints is an amateur production and it shows, but is an... interesting experience nonetheless.
The production consisted of three original plays - Untitled and Unfinished, written and directed by Bruce Alexander, The Suicide A Fish, written and directed by Omar Francis and The Pretty & The Poison, written and directed by Maylynne Walton.
All the pieces were social and cultural satires which often featured heavy-handed metaphors and motives but did work on some levels, while failing on others.
Alexander's Untitled and Unfinished was described as "...the Jamaican story, which isn't finished" when The Gleaner asked the rationale behind the name. The play features the characters 'Prime M', 'Minister X' and 'Sweet Hustler', among others, and skewered politics, the media - or perhaps only talk shows - and street hustling/'donmanship', all with equal fervour, if a little heavy handedly at times. Francis as 'Prime X' smiled way too often, while Maxine Hall did a not bad job playing a man.
The true star of the piece however, if such a thing was to be awarded, would be Rico Walton, who did a not bad job portraying the transition of a man from street beggar to thief to 'don' to a dead man. The play fell down somewhat at the end, for reasons which cannot be divulged if the plot is to be protected, but suffice it to say that both the writing and directing need some tightening up.
THE ENSEMBLE
The ensemble made good use of the small stage at Redbones with simple sets that conveyed what they wanted to be brought across. On the other hand there were too many set changes, especially in the first two plays, which proved to break the flow of the stories a tad too often.
The Suicide - A Fish was written and directed by Omar Francis and presented something of a conundrum. As one patron said to The Gleaner, it involved too many elements. On the other hand that may have been the intention. Seemingly a skewering of bubblegum pop culture - initially, at least - as the piece progressed far more questions than answers were offered, which may have been the playwright's intention.
The play told the story of a pop singer who was being tried for the crime of suicide by three beings who were alternately versions of the Furies/Fates of Greco/Roman mythology or shades of the lead character's, Estella's, conscience. Throw into the mix a playwright who wants to analyse Estella (played by Kristina Newman), a Judas kiss or three and the odd dollop of sarcasm (A cup of hemlock - that's so original, you are so breathtakingly original says Alexander's character as one of the three to Francis' playwright) and Suicide is a head-scratcher, not for the faint of heart.
In addition, it would have benefited either from a stronger lead performance from Newman or more rehearsals, since she failed to properly convey the correct emotions of a woman being tried for suicide on more than one occasion.
The final play, the Maylynne Walton-written and directed The Pretty & The Poison, was much more straightforward. On the programme it was described as 'a 20-minute musical extravaganza in five scenes about society and the fears that caress and embrace it'. More simply put, it was a song and dance number about crack whores. Much more easily grasped than the first two, Pretty was entertaining and the fact that practically all the females involved sang and danced - decently - while wearing what can kindly be described as lingerie (they were crack whores, remember?) did not hurt in the slightest.
LACK OF OBVIOUS MOTIVATION
What hurt it was the lack of obvious motivation or rationale in some instances on the part of some bit players, especially Rico Walton's 'Devon', who commits a murder for no other reason than to demonstrate that prostitutes lead dangerous lives, which did not seem quite enough. What was interesting was the humorous yet dead serious way the difference between Downtown and Uptown were displayed, all without a word being said, courtesy of a funny Victoria Harriett.
Brain Mints needs work - a lot of it - but the Fake Players deserve kudos for not going down the overly worn path of broad comedy or overwrought, chest-beating drama. They did something different and the results, to say the least, were interesting.
They not only made you look, they made you think.