Come next month end Ras Leon Saul’s three-act comedy drama Obeah in Court will be staged at the National Cultural Centre, according to a release from the Carib Feedback Productions.
According to the press release, the play by Ras Saul, who is listed as an internationally-renowned playwright and director, is a full-length one and features Henry Rodney, Odessa Primus, Colleen Humphrey, Max Massiah, Mark Luke Edwards, Malcolm DeFreitas and the writer himself with dancers and musicians. The soundtrack is by Barbados-based Guyanese – King Shepherd.
The play will premier on July 23 and will be staged also on July 24 and 25.
The release described the play as a comedy of errors in a triangular love affair resulting from a kinky striptease party and a court case, “after a slick con-man named Clement Stanley decides to run a common bawdy house and earn money as a pimp, but ends up being arrested and charged.”
Stanley is considered an “ingrate”, by his landlady, single mother and ex-teacher Dorcas Debidin, and she tells this to the “kinky-loving Chief Magistrate Dan Robertson when they both appear in court, after being arrested for running a common bawdy house.”
Dorcas tells the magistrate that she had rescued Clement when he was destitute and had no place to live. She took him into her house as a lodger on the specific understanding that he was a bachelor, and that he would remain in that happy state of life.
But then, Clement found a woman named, Obnite ‘Obeah’ Peters, and started doing business in her house. That, according to Dorcas, was a breach of their contract, and grounds to take possession of the room she had rented to him. But within the past couple of months, Clement had failed to pay the $250 weekly rent, jeopardizing Dorcas’ own mortgage payments.
Facing foreclosure from the bank, Dorcas decides that both Clement and his woman should go and she calls the cops. But when they appear before the Chief Magistrate Dorcas is put to the task of proving her case, with the help of a young, handsome but corrupt lawyer.
This is Ras Saul’s first play in seven years to be staged at the NCC, following up on his 2004 ‘For Better…For Worse’ and ‘In Search of Happiness’. He also directed and produced the ‘Golden Seed’ in Toronto last July.
