In the face of a wide range of contending factors it is not easy to single out one as the most important contributor to the development of Guyanese theatre. There were all sorts of African and African-derived theatre during slavery. During the same period dramatic theatre on the formal stage was introduced into the colony by visiting English companies and local “gentlemen amateurs.” Portuguese theatre became most dominant in the late nineteenth century. There were Black awareness revivals and Indian clubs through to the middle of the twentieth century. During that same period there was the popular theatre standing mainly on vaudeville while the traditional theatricals were fading in the villages.
They can all make their claims and some will have to be taken very seriously, but it is always difficult in these cases to pick a single one when so many have made telling contributions. Some were very sustaining, but neither are those to be ignored which, while not major in themselves, might have been responsible for stimulating something vital.
Without too much argument in the modern era, however, one can say that the most significant factor in the development of Guyanese theatre was the rise of the Theatre Guild of Guyana between 1957 and 1962. There are three phases to be considered: the founding of the Guild, the building of the Playhouse in Kingston, and the development of all its various activities, many of which escalated after 1962. These, however, pulled together most of the different activities and groups that existed in the late fifties. Among the things the emergence of the Guild did was to consolidate the local European amateur theatre groups, the activities on the sugar estates and the orchestration of the beginning of the most important era in Guyanese playwriting.
The Guild can claim responsibility for a major contribution to playwriting and the rise of the two most important dramatists in that context, Sheik Sadeek who was discovered by the Guild’s playwriting competitions, and Frank Pilgrim. Pilgrim was a powerhouse of that era and made seminal contributions, although many seem to know him for just one play. A reflection of the sum total of his contributions, however, may be found in the entry on him in The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Post-colonial Literatures (1995).
That one drama on which Pilgrim’s fame rests is Miriamy (1962). Although it is a travesty to limit his achievements to that one piece, since he wrote and did much more, that one piece is the most famous Guyanese comedy ever written and one of the celebrated plays of the colonial Caribbean. It did not take it very long to ascend in the region and it was a huge success in Jamaica in the mid-sixties where it played at the prestigious Little Theatre under the title Miriamy Mine. Bill Pilgrim, Frank’s brother and a leading Guyanese cultural icon, who was working in Jamaica at the time, was a member of the cast.
Miriamy is appropriately associated with the Theatre Guild and the ascendancy of Guyanese plays. It was therefore a fitting tribute to both play and playwright when it was revived after many years and produced by The Theatre Company at the Cultural Centre with a gala opening in aid of the Theatre Guild Renovation Fund. It was directed by Ron Robinson, whose own career in theatre developed as a member of the Guild where he served as actor, director and sometime Chairman.
The play is set on a fictitious Caribbean island in 1959. Although there is no attempt to disguise Guyanese society, there is no urgent effort to represent it either, except for a few trademark items including the illegal manufacture and trade of bush rum, for which Guyana was once famous but which is hardly ever heard of these days. It is a very well written play with an effective balance of humour, social commentary and satire, high farce and low comedy, with a particular sensitivity for subtle differences in the traits of social class and the dramatic possibilities of manners. It is very much a comedy of manners as it is one of situation, and although it does not depend on farcical exaggerations for its humour as many lesser plays would be tempted to do, it encourages it because of its treatment of stereotypical class characters.
Robinson’s production was well paced and, for the most part, well acted. It highlighted and benefited from the play’s best moments, which include Pilgrim’s ability to focus Miriamy, the village woman who brings fame to her homeland by giving birth to quintuplets, as the play’s main character who never appears on stage. At the same time, because of its faithfulness to the script, it unintentionally exposed its weakest characteristics.
That is because Miriamy, despite its obvious longevity and the way it can speak to all ages, is very much a play of its time. It needs to be played in period without superficial chronological adaptations in order not to appear dated. It is set in colonial times and reflects those times in the British West Indies. Its most negative characteristic is its treatment of class, and Robinson’s production helped to show this up in those instances where actors were allowed to fall into overacting – farcical portrayal of working and peasant class characters. This occasionally happened in the performance of Leslyn Lashley-Khan as the maid Dulcibelle and Simone Dowding as Norah, a country woman and Miriamy’s sister. They were both strong in the presence and believability they gave to their respective characters, but tended at times to camp it up and play the stereotype.
Pilgrim laughs at his rural and proletarian characters, their mannerisms, their sexual morality, which creates the main situation in the plot, and a kind of crass simplicity which he inflicts on them. He laughs at the middle class as well, one can justifiably argue, but the class position is betrayed in the following examples. Dulcibelle can be very sullen and ‘own-way’ when she chooses, and even her employer, the doctor (Ron Robinson), cannot sway her. The young reporter (Michael Ignatius) who visits the house, however, knows very well how to deal with gullible working class females: flattery and a glass of rum works every time. Whenever the lower class types are to be pacified, they are bundled off to the kitchen with a glass of rum which puts them at their happiest and in their place.
That is what happens when Norah visits, in contrast to the visit of the white Englishman (Peter Bruce) who is one of the many candidates for paternity of Miriamy’s quins. He is treated according to his class and colour. He joins the doctor in the dining room for dinner and is hidden away resting in one of the rooms, quite sheltered and away from the “dashed awkward” situation faced by all of Miriamy’s other lovers.
However, Pilgrim also turns his satirical rebuke on the two charitable ladies, the doctor’s wife, Mariatha Causway-Holder (aka Jennifer Thomas) and her cousin Maude, played by La Vonne George. Their guilt is a snobbish, middle-class hypocrisy and they were played appropriately by actresses with a comfortable command. George demonstrated an understanding of high farce and the best effective style to play a high-society type full of self-importance and false morality. A similar style was necessary for the portrayal of the pretentious, aspiring village clerk, who was very effectively played by Lionel Whyte, while Henry Rodney was quite convincing as the village chairman.
Robinson had little difficulty in the lead role as the doctor, the play’s sane, concerned character with a conscience responsible for holding the plot’s complications together and finding its happy resolution. He managed his role as the calm, straight character who is the foil in a comedy surrounded by comic characters.
Robinson effectively handled a play that is, however, conscious of social satire in which Pilgrim made use of many different nuances of the structure and manners of a small colonial society. It is a period play that can speak to all times.
