They say we all have one great story in us. Well, actor Martina Laird arguably has three. But it may not have been a great idea for her debut play Driftwood to try and tell all of them at once.
The setting is an intriguing, little-dramatised one: the Trinidadian capital Port of Spain on the eve of the 1956 general election which would set the island and its sibling Tobago on the route to independence from Britain.
The action revolves around Alma, a drinking den that’s owned by posh, childish white Brit Mansion (Roger Ringnose), but run by the hardnosed, weary Pearl (Ellen Thomas) and her beautiful, fiery daughter Ruby (Cat White). Justin Audibert’s production brings this small corner of a lost world to life very nicely indeed. Calypso blares on the radio; different brands of rum are sampled and argued over; the superficially charming but under the surface obnoxious Mansion loudly refuses to believe that the – to his mind – hapless Black population would ever vote for independence.
It’s an intriguing snapshot of both the times and Trinidad’s diversity, with its significant Indian population represented by Seldom (Shane David-Joseph), an affable policeman, whose comings and goings are dictated by the febrile politics of the island. Though you soon adjust, the accents are far from the generic Caribbean lilt – it’s very authentic and impressive work from dialect coach Aundrea Fudge.
Still, Laird never really drills down into this as she might, with the plot rather focussing on the more timeless human drama – shading into melodrama – that’s triggered by the arrival of Diamond (Martins Imhangbe), a rum delivery guy whose seemingly random appearance turns out to be anything but. I won’t spoil, but you can perhaps surmise from the name that he has a connection to Pearl and Ruby. Once revelations start revealing themselves, Driftwood becomes an intense (very intense) meditation on the meaning of family, in a way that pretty much overshadows the historical/political/postcolonial side of the story.
But it’s also wrapped into a thriller that concerns comically nasty American sailor Tom (Ziggy Heath) and his attempts to use Alma for some sort of shady smuggling operation. This seemingly tertiary plot – which doesn’t emerge until deep in – seems largely worked in as a means to bring Driftwood to an overwrought ending that does not feel earned.
There is much that is promising in Driftwood, but the smouldering passions of Pearl, Ruby and Diamond are surely enough to have combusted by themselves – they don’t need petrol pouring on. And indeed, we could have done with a little more exploration of them as characters. Artificially bringing things to an explosive head via the smuggling story ultimately feels a bit cheap: either Laird has tried to pack in too much, or she didn”t have enough faith in her own core characters.
