On Saturday, 19th March 2016, the National Cultural Centre hosted a production of Ras Leon Saul’s For Better…For Worse. This newest incarnation of the play was directed by Max Massiah, assisted by Rae Wiltshire. The cast of the play was large – composed of thespians of Guyanese theatre alongside new and fast-rising stars of the local stage. However, unfortunately, a lot of the actors were hampered by the bland directing of a script that needed some revision in order to make it as strong as it needed to be for the contemporary Guyanese stage.
The plot offers several storylines that circle around drugs: Canadian detectives go undercover to capture a drug baron, an elderly couple becomes embroiled in the world of drugs due to their children’s relationships with drug dealers and drug mules, and a former drug addict is about to get married to the drug baron the detectives are searching for.
Despite the efforts of the directors to integrate these storylines into each other, each one still felt very separate by the end of the show, almost as if the play was a montage of several scenes that are only bridged briefly and coincidentally between character interactions instead of being an actual plan that is meant to offer a single play with various plot threads coming together to form a unified production.
While there were minor incidents that didn’t work for the production – such as the actors’ continuously shifting accents and the shadows the lighting cast on the actors’ faces – there is a major problem of the play that needs to be discussed: the presentation of women in the play.
Most of the female characters felt underwritten and underdeveloped when compared to their male counterparts and many of the women were highly sexualized, not for the purposes of emphasizing the play’s themes or ideology nor to drive the plot along, but simply, it seems, to entertain the audience.
So, for example, the scenes where the scantily clad women of the “Dopa Gang” perform individual raunchy dances by playing directly to the audience do nothing for the play except to expose these women (pun intended) to the cheering crowd.
It doesn’t do anything for the play and its messages. The women are presented as addicts, victims, sexual objects, drug mules, or a combination of all those things. In fact, it’s almost quite tempting to use the term “sexist” to describe the play. Even the female characters who are supposed to be strong – such as the two detectives hunting the drug lord – are reduced to nothing more than mere damsels in distress by the end of the play, where they have to be rescued by a man.
In terms of the performances, there were quite a few players who managed to stand out. Opara Samuel as Nicholas “Pa” Fennimore was really very, very good. He has good comic timing and is a welcome addition to the Guyanese stage. Clemencio Goddette, as his wife, performed with ease. Paul Budnah, as Ras Yoshua, was a pleasant surprise as some people were quite skeptical about his ability to play the role leading up to the performance. However, he pulled it off, giving a fine performance. Mark Luke Edwards was well suited to his part and also performed well.
Nathaya Whaul, Kimberley Fernandes and Melinda Primo-Solomon are fabulous actors and deserve more than the eye-candy parts they were allotted. Two of Guyana’s fastest rising stars, Le Tisha Da Silva and Ackeem Joseph, who both turned in three outstanding performances each at last year’s National Drama Festival, have little to do in the production and neither Da Silva’s searing sensuality nor Joseph’s confidence managed to redeem their roles. Mark Kazim, Sonia Yarde, Kanini Fyffe, and Timolyn Barclay also starred and performed ably.