Play Mas

The Orange Tree Theatre’s Lazarus-like resurgence continues with this superb revival. Mustapha Matura’s 1974 play is a deeply and darkly funny exploration of Trinidad before and after the Caribbean island’s independence from Britain in 1962. It sweeps you up and leaves you breathless.

The Trinidadian carnival tradition of ‘Play Mas’ – short for ‘play masquerade’ – forms the feverish climax of both acts. In the first, set in the late ’50s, Samuel (Seun Shote, pictured) is the put-upon employee of tailor Ramjohn Gookool (Johann Myers) and his domineering mother (Melanie La Barrie). In the second, set in 1963, he is police commissioner of the newly independent Trinidad, contending with civil unrest.

In Matura’s skilled hands, ‘Play Mas’ is both an event and a metaphor. Carnivalesque roleplay becomes a mirror for Trinidad’s struggle to forge its own identity amid deep-seated social tensions and manipulation by self-interested foreign powers. Beneath the noise and the colour, the heady rush of freedom from constraints, beats the threat of chaos. The most manically funny scenes are often when violence feels closest at hand.

Paulette Randall’s production hits you in the face while smiling widely. She captures the play’s delirious, sometimes dreamlike and often savagely satirical tone. Adverts for tobacco and movie stars overlook the stage – acting as ever-present reminders of the bombardment of Western ideals and commerce. The sound of steel drums and, later, chillingly, guns, conceals the change knocking on the door.

The cast step up to the script and sketch their characters vividly, from Myers’s fastidious, frustrated Gookool – obsessed with making a suit fit for an American film star – to La Barrie as his scornful mother. But it is Shote, as Samuel, who carries the weight here. Beginning as a lovable underdog, he ends the play dressed as a dictator – and laughing as the shooting starts. It’s a horrifying, unforgettable image.