Shaky 'Steel' still achieves
Posted: Thursday, September 15, 2005

By Terry Joseph

For a production with no shortage of delightful moments, Steel, the musical by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott and Tony Award-winning composer Galt Mc Dermot, which opened Tuesday at Queen's Hall, failed to convey a clear, strong message; probably because it attempted to deliver far too many.

Dubiously marketed as a "world premiere" (the original version was staged 14 years ago in Massachusetts with disastrous result), a hugely rewritten Steel was promoted locally as a work on the history of pan, borne along by incidence of social conflict on various levels, as was indeed the case during the instrument's infancy.

Already an ambitious proposition - given local passion about any attempt to tell the story of pan - Steel is fraught with further difficulty as, in far too many instances, Walcott's characters do not accurately reflect the social hierarchy template of either barrack-yard or panyard existence during the period interpreted in Jackie Hinkson's definitive set design, which placed us in the immediate post-WWII frame when urban hill shanties were still far apart.

But the absence of machismo is not the only unsettling indicator of period contradiction. Costuming at large, the ubiquitous sno-cone vendor, an otherwise inexplicable switch from drinking Old Oak rum to Johnny Walker Scotch Whisky by lead character, calypsonian Growler (Albert La Veau), the would-be West Side Story tableau of gang warfare and references to high-rise buildings also transports the audience deep into the 1970s.

Consequently, both imagery and dialogue suffer. Pan historians would universally scoff at the idea of a member giving backchat to the band's captain in the earlier period, or police and players engaging in gun-battles; even with all the brutality meted out to pan-men by authorities at the time. This severe variation of the environment, however, rendered the supreme authority of the forever inebriated Growler less suspect.

It is largely through Growler's narrative that Walcott seeks to tell the story but his core message is confused by a perplexing list of unduly intricate sub-plots, some of which defy widely known legends. Among the eyebrow raisers is a plan by Roger des Ruisseaux (Brian Green) of the Belmont-based Bandidos steelband to shift residence and loyalty to Woodbrook, joining The Raiders, a proposition as preposterous as locating Eli Mannette (Leon Morenzie) in the Belmont camp.

Also questionable is Walcott's infusion of ethnic conflict on the hill, when an East Indian family is split over a love affair between Zora (Marsha Woodley), daughter of the prostitute Joyce (Dianne Williams) and "Scholarship" (Conrad Parris); hardly an issue between sufferers of shared oppression circa 1950. Scholarship's performance of a raga (sung to what seemed a rhumba tempo) is accompanied by an engaging Indian dance but serves no other purpose than to shore up the flawed theory.

Musically, Mc Dermot's interpretation of calypso is not unexpectedly constrained by the clash of cultures, not to mention Walcott's lyrics, the writer often trying to fit far too many words into the line, on occasion severely disturbing metre. La Veau was most affected by such constructions, slippage cleverly rescued each time from the orchestra pit by Douglas Redon's group of experienced musicians.

But if local audiences are willing to allow Walcott these discrepancies on the premise of artistic licence, Steel does deliver to the stage selected signal events in the instrument's evolution, like early hints at unification of orchestras and Eli's decision to reverse the concept of a convex playing surface of the pan into a concave shape.

In addition, there are strong performances from La Veau, Morenzie, Kurtis Gross ("Bones"), Parris, Green and first-timers Williams and Woodley, a cameo by Mervyn de Goeas and vignettes by Aunt Jessica (Mavis John) and Uncle Daniel (Noel Blandin) adding much needed humour and indeed flavour to the lengthy production, which took all of three hours and 40 minutes. Inventive lighting by Trinidad Theatre Workshop chairman John Andrews also provided lift.

In the absence of a list of song-titles (or, for that matter, a synopsis of the work) in the printed programme, we were left to guess the name of each piece, a terrible pity as Steel contains some rather sparkling items in its soundtrack, songs worthy of special mention, as does Noble Douglas' choreography; well received at every sequence by the full house. And there were precious lines too, like Growler describing his condition one night as "standing on the sidewalk with key in hand, waiting on the house to pass."

The opening night audience included President Max Richards and wife, Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards, Cabinet Ministers Dr Lenny Saith, Eric Williams and Joan Yuille-Williams, Queen's Hall chairman Astra da Costa and deputy, Clarence Moe, former world-beating beauty queens Wendy Fitzwilliam and Giselle la Ronde-West, master designer Peter Minshall, Scotiabank MD Richard Young and actors Errol Jones, Errol Pilgrim and Glenn Davis; who were serenaded on arrival by Neal & Massy Trinidad All Stars.

In the sum, although Steel was both long and hard, Walcott has achieved much with the staging of this production, not just by touching the provocative topic but, even if we limit appraisal to the tangible message that corporate Trinidad and Tobago, our intellectuals and artistes can jointly embrace indigenous theatre; Steel must be ranked as a triumph for theatre arts.

Tickets for Derek Walcott's Steel now on at Queen's Hall, St Ann's have been sold out up to Saturday. A limited number are available for Sunday on a first-come basis.

Reprinted from:
www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_features?id=101993867

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