At six o’clock last Thursday, on the evening of Boxing Day, December 26, 2007, the dramatic production titled Nuff an Plenty opened at the Little Theatre in Kingston, Jamaica. The curtains were opened for the 67th time according to a tradition in the theatre in Jamaica that started in 1941. The season of the famous Jamaica Pantomime is now on and is likely to run until, perhaps, May, 2008 or thereabouts.
This pantomime is an annual production of The Little Theatre Movement, (LTM) which is regarded as the oldest extant theatre company in Jamaica. They founded the local tradition which has been presented by the specially formed Pantomime Company under the name ‘LTM Pantomime Musical’ and now ‘LTM National Pantomime,’ a specially designed dramatic production with music, songs, dance and popular gimmicks. In the old tradition, the performance venue was the Ward Theatre, built in 1912 on North Parade in the heart of downtown Kingston, but it has recently shifted uptown to its current venue in The Little Theatre on Tom Redcam Avenue, close to Cross Roads and New Kingston. This theatre was built by the LTM in the mid 1960s to give the company a permanent home, and it is located on a street named after Thomas MacDermot, a famous writer and Poet Laureate of Jamaica during the first quarter of the twentieth century. He wrote under the name Tom Redcam (his own name turned backwards).
The National Pantomime Musical for the season 2007/2008 is Nuff an Plenty with book and lyrics by Barbara Gloudon, music by Grub Cooper, movement and staging (choreography) by Rex Nettleford, Kevin Moore and George Howard, and lighting by Michael McDonald. It is directed by Robert Clarke. Even this list of credits reflects parts of the pantomime tradition, as do the title, the story, themes and plot, set in a fictitious Jamaican community called Nuff and Plenty.
The introduction announces “welcome to Nuff and Plenty, every ting you want deh yah plenty-plenty!” In the story, the community is having the annual thanksgiving celebrations “led by Miss Gertie who has tried to give her people all they need. But there are always those who want more, such as Mr Gravalicious Brown, the resident entrepreneur and his wife Mrs Mattitilda Brown [who] are sure they can provide new opportunities to the villagers. When discord arises over the results of the Miss Nuff and Plenty Beauty Contest, Miss Gertie’s supporters look to see what Gravalicious Brown can offer. With him they can get the chance to go to Foreign where surely there is nuff more and plenty more to be had.” There are other characters such as the teacher Miss Match and the warner woman Sister Birdie (a ‘see far’ clairvoyant obeah woman type). But as the plot thickens and the complications develop, Gravalicious Brown’s plans fail to materialise and “it is left to Miss Gertie to remind the community that there is always more to life than meets the eye.”
This story is steeped in tradition. Pantomime plots are normally built around the form of a fable with a moral to impart; there are threats and even villainy, and something resembling the old morality plays with a contest between good and evil. In the end, good prevails and it all ends happily ever after. However, the dominant form is laughter; pantomimes are popular and humorous with characteristic satire, social commentary, topical references and setting, but always light-hearted and designed for a good laugh. In Nuff and Plenty there are the contemporary themes of the search for betterment and migration, contentment and local self-belief, even the characteristic controversies over beauty contests.
The characters too, reflect the pantomime tradition. There is the kind-hearted, well-intentioned leader, Miss Gertie, who comes up against the ‘evil’ antagonist, Gravalicious Brown (‘gravalicious’ is a Jamaican word for ‘greedy’), and the influence of the obeah man or woman. The pantomime is a descendant of the British tradition in which there is always a hero and a villain, romantic leads and a ‘Dame,’ a very hilarious female traditionally played by a man. In the tradition, as well, the male romantic lead is played by a woman.
This Christmas time theatre was brought to Jamaica by English colonial personnel and performed annually in its original form until 1941 when it began to be Jamaicanised. At the time the Jamaican theatre had been long developing along indigenous lines, but was still very much dominated by ex-patriate ‘amateurs.’ It was this mixture that founded the local version, when Jack and the Beanstalk was performed as the annual pantomime for that year. Thereafter, there was always a local element in the productions such as in Soliday and the Wicked Bird, Busha Bluebeard, Anancy and Pandora and later, Anancy and Beenie Bud. Fantasies, myths and legends were always drawn on for stories and the first local element was the introduction of Jamaican folklore, Jamaican characters and more local situations. Some of those early titles reflect the English legendary mythical types such as Pandora and Bluebeard, who then became ‘Busha’ Bluebeard, a white planter-type in a local plantation setting. Then local heroes such as Soliday and later Anancy came in as hero or villain.
The Jamaica pantomimes have largely stuck with tradition in some areas, as in the case of the production personnel and practices. Barbara Gloudon has dominated (her critics have said “monopolised”) the writing for some twenty years or more. A journalist by profession, she took to the theatre as a duck to the pond, with her excellent sensitivity to language and her deep understanding of Jamaican Creole and social sub-culture. She now applies an informed formula to the writing. Worthy of note as well in the personnel is Rex Nettleford who, for more than thirty years has been involved in choreographing and in the movement, and in staging pantomimes. Too busy for much of that period to take command by himself, he has brought others along so that this aspect of the annual production has become its neatest and most organized. Michael McDonald is another cornerstone who has taken over from the legendary George Carter in lighting, while the use of a resident orchestra to provide live music has been maintained since the many early years of another legend, the Mapletoft Poole Orchestra.
While entrenched as a tradition, however, the pantomime has undergone substantial changes over the decades. It has dispensed with some of the customs like the Dame and the male/female role reversals, even though there are still romantic leads. The Dame has always been known for slapstick, and while ‘she’ has taken her exit, the slapstick has not only remained, but has largely taken over to become one of the increasingly dominant elements in contemporary pantomimes. Anancy has also gone off to the rafters, but the ‘ginnal’ trickster type and villain will always be present in different costumes and guises. In 2006/2007 it was the mischievous Khaki Dog, in 2007/2008 it is the greedy, grasping-for-more Gravalicious Brown.
Yet the general tenor has very gradually shifted. Gloudon, master of the formulae, has been a leading change agent as she was involved in writing scripts such as Schoolahs in the 1980s, which placed an emphasis on topical social issues and which dominated the scripts for a long time. Earlier, in the seventies, acclaimed dramatist Trevor Rhone wrote scripts such as Music Boy, which explored going topical subjects. Since laughter has always been one of the factors responsible for the production’s popularity, the topicality has been satirical, although today, the humour seems to come more from situations than from satirical microscopes.
Just as the phenomenally successful movie The Harder They Come influenced Music Boy, the exceedingly popular roots theatre or dancehall theatre influenced some of the metamorphosis in pantomimes since the eighties. Roots theatre has been popular because of its sexuality, but equally important have been topical references, the slapstick and the comic. Since pantomime is a commited ‘f
amily’ show, the influential elements have been the comic styles. This was the case in Howzat!
Written by Gloudon and directed by Brian Heap, the production team was for the most part the same as for Nuff and Plenty. In 2006/2007 World Cup Cricket was highly topical, so Howzat! was about cricket. It was built around a ‘curry goat’ cricket contest between two village teams, with the usual set of stock characters, the villainy of a mischievously subversive street mongrel and a serving of spirit folklore. The changes and new developments in the Jamaica pantomime of the present day were there demonstrated with the emphasis on the popular comic element with the constant strength of the disciplined choreographed movement still holding centre stage.
The LTM Pantomime Musical, or the LTM National Pantomime sees itself as the most popular Jamaican theatre and has offered itself as a tourist attraction. It still describes itself as the oldest surviving Jamaican theatre. It is a tradition without doubt, but how much of the ‘surviving tradition’ is still there or has been replaced, will make a very interesting study.
