‘Calabash Alley’ tours

We heard the radio serial Calabash Alley on Radio Guyana and we are now looking forward to seeing the stage version at the Cultural Centre.

We have here with us this evening Comrade Freddie Kissoon and his troupe of actors including — “Mabel,” “Papa George,” “Danny King” and many more and so it went on. The speaker was no less a person than the Minister of Culture in the Forbes Burnham Government.

For a moment, I thought I was in Russia, but the magic words “Calabash Alley” brought me back to my senses. Down there in those days, the words “Mr” and “Mrs” were unheard of. Everybody was addressed as “Comrade” this or that and we were always reminded that Guyana was the only English speaking country on the continent of South America and was several square miles larger than England itself.

All the performances were sold out and the applause at the end of each show there, was thunderous. But two actors got the biggest ovation although their roles were what we call in the theatre “bit parts.”

The reason was they were the only Guyanese in the cast. Two of our members could not make the tour. I posted the script to Comrade Francis Farrier, the director of the Tumarie Drama Group which was making arrangements for our performances and he rehearsed the two “limers.”

In Grenada, the reception was even more overwhelming. After Calabash Alley started at 8.30 pm on the opening night at St George’s Secondary School, there were hundreds of people outside who could not get into the building. The organisers asked us to stage the play again at 11.30 pm. The actors rose to the occasion and gave a performance of a lifetime to another “ram-crammed” audience.

The St Lucians were quite vocal. Playing to a packed audience, words of approval or disapproval were shouted to the players on stage. For instance, when Papa George was “macoing” Mabel and Danny in the room, they shouted, “Eesalop”-meaning “not good.” One word with a change of inflection and intonation, was used to express their mood, it was “Eegas.” After a humourous incident, they shouted a short and upbeat — “Eegas.” When the mood of the play conveyed sadness, they shouted plaintively, “Eeeeegaas.”

“You don’t charge your friends to see you on stage,” the organiser told us when more than half of the audience at the Peace Memorial Hall in St Vincent came in free. After we explained that they did not know us, his reply was that they would not come to see people they did not know. Once in a while when his group staged a variety concert, the audience simply walked in without paying.

A retired United Nations broadcaster, James King from Trinidad who lived in Barbados when we performed there, was overjoyed to see Calabash Alley. I called him to the stage at the end of the play when I thanked the capacity crowd. Jimmy was one of our best actors and I had the pleasure of performing with him in several plays.

“I have decided to go brave and forget Coward. After this I’ll concentrate on staging West Indian plays like your group,” so said the director who had invited me to see his company rehearsing Private Lives by Noel Coward. He went on to say that certain sectors of the society might stop attending his productions but that was the chance he would have to take. The attendance in Roseau, Dominica was nothing to shout about. The radio serial Calabash Alley was not broadcast beforehand and the play was unheard of. Strangely, it was broadcast about a year after our stage performance. In St Kitts, it was a roaring success. Clement ‘Bouncin’ Williams and his drama group went all out in their promotion of the play. On our arrival, we were surprised to see a well constructed set waiting for us. The patrons were extremely enthusiastic and when I was introduced to the audience at the end of the production. I thought the applause would never end.

On the contrary, audience wise, Canada was a catastrophe. At the Toronto Theatre Workshop on Alexander Street, off Yonge Street, we could have counted the attendance on our fingers and toes. As Jasse McDonald told me afterwards, the West Indian Canadians have no interest in theatre and the Canadians hardly attend plays in summertime.

In Curacao in the Netherlands Antilles, Calabash Alley was staged in Theater De Tempel — a former Jewish synagogue, Mrs Mila Palm and Mr Pacheco Domacassie organised everything perfectly.

Tobago must not be left out. At a performance in Roxborough, a villager was so enamoured by Papa George’s performance that when he was taken from the stage and brought out to the lobby on a stretcher, she reached out and gently caressed his genitals.

In the States, an actor could not find work so he took a job at the zoo where he put on a gorilla costume and climbed into a cage.

He screamed for his life when he saw another gorilla there. “Shut up!” said the gorilla,” You think you are the only actor out of work?”