DRAMA ON ABACO

June 2001 Table of Contents

DRAMA ON ABACO
Jack Hardy

How pleasant to live on an island as beautiful as Abaco and yet be able to enjoy professional drama. This was the case from 3rd to 5th May when distinguished artist Alton Lowe and the Abaco Cultural Society presented two plays at the Lowe Gallery on Black Sound, Green Turtle Cay.

The first production was Noel Coward's Private Lives , a three act play which was first produced in 1930. Much of the fun of this frothy little comedy of manners derives from the fact that each of the two actors - Ellen Haynes and Travis Neff - play two parts.

The basis of the play is the presence of two honeymoon couples - Elyot and Sibyl Chase, Victor and Amanda Prinne - at the same hotel in France in rooms with adjoining balconies. The complication is that Elyot and Amanda were once married to each other. Their new mates are very inquisitive about the previ After a few scenes of near misses, Elyot and Amanda meet on the balcony where all the action takes place and unwittingly rekindle their feelings for each other. Their attempts to hide the presence of their pas the source of much humour and cause both sets of partners to experience a honeymoon break down. Elyot and Amanda decide to give their relationship another chance and off they head for Paris. The final scene has Victor and Sibyl meeting on the balcony, unaware of their mutual abandonment, and beginning to get to know each other.

The enormously expressive Ellen Haynes and the talented Travis Neff were both accomplished quick-change artists, taking only a few seconds between scenes to reappear as their second character. Both of them were able to delineate between the two characters they played. It was Neff who probably had the trickiest task as the acerbic Elyot and the pompous Victor both shared traits of the upper class male of the time. It was an ingenious production which brought gales of laughter from the capacity audience, appreciating both the situational comedy and those telling Noel Coward throw-away bon mots.

The second production was the world premiere of Sandra Riley's Miss Ruby. The play is a monologue by Ruby Curry (played by Luisa Black) who is a teacher at the school on Green Turtle Cay in 1927. School is out for the summer and Ruby is on Gillam Bay in a reflective mood. She tells stories of her early upbringing in New Plymouth, including the gruesome loss of an arm by a youngster setting off fireworks on Empire Day. The boy's dog runs off with his arm which is never seen again. But it reappears in dreams and fancies, terrifying the young Miss Ruby. The details of the stories Miss Ruby tells are strikingly authentic, particularly the tales of wrecking and salvage. One tells of a preacher on a Sunday morning commanding his congregation to deep and earnest prayer. After a lengthy period of silence the congregation opens their eyes to find the preacher gone. Looking out of the window behind them they see the preacher heading in his boat towards a wreck foundering on the reef, seeking to establish salvage claims. Only the preacher could see the boat from his vantage point in the pulpit. By next service the pulpit was at the other end of the church.

Miss Ruby was the niece of William Curry who emigrated from Green Turtle to Key West without a penny in his pocket and ended up as Florida's richest man. She goes to stay with her Uncle William to receive her education at a local convent school. We are taken into the society of Key West at the latter end of the 19th Century and learn about the extensive trade between Havana, Key West, New York and Green Turtle Cay.

Miss Ruby falls in love with a midshipman from the battleship Maine. Darwin (so called because his father was reading Darwin's treatise when the boy was born) and Ruby engage to be married but the battleship is called into action two days prior to the wedding. Darwin is killed when the Maine is blown up in Havana harbour. Years later the boat is raised and Darwin's is the only body to be positively identified. Miss Ruby returns to New Plymouth to teach the children there are remains a spinster, albeit one who invests herself in her surrogate children and inspires them to be independent and progressive in their thinking.

As you can imagine, there is a great deal of island humour and pathos in Miss Ruby's recounting of her life. The audience was taken on a roller coaster ride of emotions by the mercurial Luisa Black, sometimes speaking in hushed tones and then exploding into song and laughter. It was a masterly performance that will long be remembered by those present.

Alton Lowe and the Abaco Cultural Society are to be congratulated on their initiative in bringing these plays to Abaco in such a delightful setting.

May 2001 Table of Contents