Play Mas (Orange Tree Theatre)

Many of Trinidad’s dramatists have used its annual Mardi Gras-style carnival to address the island nation’s soul. Playing Mas, the act of taking part, involves dressing up and drinking – spirits and spiritualism, if you will – as much for tourists as natives. The Trinidad-born playwright Mustapha Matura – an Evening Standard winner in 1974 – turned the two-day festival into a symbol for the problems of post-colonialism: both the poor work ethic holding the country back and the power vacuum that opens as a result.

It starts with an aspiring tailor, Ramjohn Gookool (Johann Myers), working under British rule. He earns by turning out bland khaki uniforms – a stark contrast with his elderly mother’s vivid saris – for sweat-soaked British businessmen, but dreams of double-breasted suits and financial success. His doltish, young assistant Samuel – obsessed with American films – just wants to play mas, and soon finds himself caught up in a burgeoning political movement pushing for independence.

After the end of colonial rule in 1962, it’s Samuel who gets on in life, rising to police commissioner on a wave of corruption and new American money. It brews further discontent and carnival’s cancelled to prevent an uprising – until, that is, Samuel realises that it holds the key to his problems.

Interestingly, by writing about Trinidad in a British dramatic tradition, Matura delivers a sort of state-of-another-nation play, and Play Mas serves as a insightful induction into Trinidadian politics and its paymasters, its heritage and its culture. The tussle between an old British colonial order and the seduction of new American capitalism is echoed and exacerbated in the tensions between the island’s Indo- and Afro-Trinidadian populations. Behind that, though, you see the way a small island nation is under the economic thumb of superpowers: Libby Watson’s set is lined with posters for imported spirits and Hollywood films.

On a simple level, the play works as a portrait of the way corruption creeps into a society, as uninspiring leaders look for easy answers – and there’s contemporary resonance in that, as well as an economy stalling as demand dwindles and dries up. Both find their expression – beautifully – in Seun Shote‘s performance as Samuel; a man covering his cluelessness with a smile, even as his eyes betray the panic setting in. It’s a brilliant comic effort, skewering the leader while maintaining sympathy for the man beneath.

Paulette Randall‘s production is admirably clear on all this, and draws out the innate theatricality of fancy dress as Matura steers events into surrealism. She’s hampered by the play’s structure though, dated as it is, which opts for historical scope over dramatic tension. Worse than that: she botches the climactic carnival, which ought to be unbearable, with the tinny sound of canned gunfire.

Play Mas runs at the Orange Tree until 11th April. Click here for more information and to book tickets.