The two productions of the play Going for Love held on Monday at the Theatre Guild proved to be huge crowd pullers and pleasers. The play is the second dramatic presentation by the Barbadians at this year’s Carifesta, the first being Odale’s Choice, which was held at Queen’s College on Saturday.
When Stabroek News attended the 8 p.m. production, there was a packed house at the Theatre Guild. This newspaper was told that the matinee production was also well attended.
Going for Love is a play written by Barbadian Glenville Lovell and directed by another Barbadian Algie Yearwood. The play traces the return of Velda, a nurse from Boston, to Barbados to convince her husband to move to Boston with her and their young daughter. Her husband, Curtis chose to return to Barbados and do farming after living in Boston for four months. Unknowing to Velda, since his return to the island, Curtis has started a relationship with a 20-year-old woman named Marcey. Curtis attempts to break ties with Marcey after seeing her with another man and knowing of his wife’s impending return.
He tries to stop her from calling his home telephone number. Whenever, he answers the phone when she calls, he tells his wife that the person on the phone has dialed a wrong number. Curtis is found out, however, courtesy of a message left on the answering machine that his wife insisting on installing. The message reveals the whole relationship and also that Marcey is pregnant with Curtis’s child.
This leads to a rocky relationship afterwards between husband and wife. However, the plot has further complications when another message left on the answering machine reveals that Velda has not remained completely true to her marriage vows either.
As time goes on, Curtis later reveals that the Marcey’s baby is not his, and Velda confesses that she has cheated once before. After these confessions, the audience is left to see whether things will be patched up between the two or whether the couple will separate. Each partner has different dreams and neither seems willing to reach a compromise. Eventually, the husband has a change of heart and decides that they will give the marriage another try and that he will move to Boston with his wife.
Although the play may be classified as a comedy, it deals with the serious issues of love, commitment, sacrifice, marital infidelity and migration. And according to the director his aim is to “provoke enough thought to cause the audience to take a second look at what they consider important as they live and love, and express themselves as Caribbean people”.
The character of Curtis was played by Anderson Armstrong who is affectionately known as “Blood”. He is one the founding members, lead vocalists and guitarists of the popular Barbados band “Square One”, who in the 1990s regularly teamed up with Barbadian singing sensation Allison Hinds. He played his role well and his acting skills were well appreciated by the audience, since he was the source of much of the humour in the play.
Carla Springer played the role of the wife, Velda. She has over 22-years of experience in acting and holds a Masters degree in Arts Management. Her performance was equally commendable and she too proved to be a crowd favourite.
At the conclusion of the show, some of those in attendance told Stabroek News what they thought of the play. One man said that he enjoyed the show so much that he had attended both productions. He explained that he had attended the initial production a bit late so he decided to come to the second instalment in order to see the play in its entirety.
One respected local actor and playwright, who asked not to be named, said that “the play was a slick production.” He said that it was nice to see the return of drama to the Theatre Guild as it reminded him of the glory days of local theatre in the 1960s and the 1980s. He was also ecstatic to see a packed playhouse. He was also pleased to see a crowd which exercised control and did not disturb the actors while they were on stage.
The only negative he said was the fact that the organisers had scheduled two plays at the same venue at the same time. According to the original schedule released by the Carifesta Secretariat the Cayman Islands play One Black, One White was to be staged on Monday evening at the Theatre Guild.
