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Playboy of the West Indies

Published Thursday 9 December 2004 at 15:00 by Peter Hepple

Whereas Playboy of the Western World is recognised as a serious play, despite its comedy overtones, Mustapha Matura’s Trinidadian version is all good humour. Possibly this is because its setting, a small fishing village, may have some significance to West Indians but to us it is simply a colourful background for this clever adaptation.

Most of Synge’s characters are here. The playboy himself, here named Ken, who believes he has killed his father and becomes a hero despite, but probably because of, that fact. The initially stroppy daughter of the owner of the ramshackle rum shop. The bloodstained Da, rising from the supposed dead. And the dubious embraces of the local voodoo woman.

What do not come across quite so well as in the original are the tragic elements, the downtrodden lives of the deprived Irish peasants and the sense of loss felt by Peggy - Pegeen in the original - when the man she has learned to love is reconciled up to a point with his father. The people in this version may be poor but are not overly worried about it.

It actually turns out to be a very jolly seasonal entertainment, with some excellent acting. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Ken is another of the impressive young black actors who are now emerging and he is well partnered by Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Peggy. Joy Richardson, who was one of the young girls in the 1984 production of the play, has now assumed the smothering mantle of Mama Benin, and there are some spirited veterans of black theatre, including Larrington Walker, Shango Baku, Malcolm Frederick and Danny John-Jules as the avenging father.

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