Reviews - (Date: July 28, 2004) Jamaica Observer

By Michael Edwards, Observer Writer

"TRAMPS A FINE LINE"

Give Patrick Brown and Trevor Nairne credit, they know how to throw change-ups. When the opening scene with star Glen Campbell and Donisha Prendergast (alternating with Maylynne Walton) starts out as a prosaic "morning after" sequence, the audience suddenly realises that Campbell is actually chained to the couch.

Even better, when the dialogue between them threatens to turn into a tepid discourse on male infidelity, the producers unleash the human whirlwind that is Deon Silvera (as another of Campbell's spurned conquests), and then pretty much get out of her way.

Doing "ghetto fabulous" as only she can, Silvera doesn't so much steal show as she commandeers it, an onstage coup d'etat , if you will. It's quite sometime on ward until the play's initial balance of power is restored and by then, Silvera is already established as the main reason (thankfully not the only one) to watch this.
Charlie Wood (or "dutty Woody" as Silvera's character invariably styles him) is the playa of playas. His little black book doesn't simply keep names, addresses and phone contacts, it has the date, time and interval between first meeting and first coupling, for some 499, ladies that Charlie has proudly "killed" or scored.

Number four hundred and odd is Shanika, she of the aforementioned chain, and other medieval torture devices. Fed up with being loved and left, she's about to take out her frustration and anger on the previously unsuspecting Woody, a la Lorena Bobbit.

She's chosen to invite a couple of other victims over to both help with and witness Woody's demise, via a strategically adjusted guillotine. One is Bubbles (Silvera), an "erratic dancer" who holds the distinction of being the quickest to bed by Woody's book. The other is Keisha, number 261, and otherwise known as Mrs Charlie Wood. The third guest we'll come to a little later.

With its basic premise thus set up, the play delivers its laughs thick and fast, recriminations and revelations zooming and exploding across the room like missiles. There are occasional lapses into the reflective passages (especially from Shanika, less so from Woody) that border on the sanctimonious.

But the producers have a change-up for that too. Enter Simone, Woody's most recent conquest, who's about to show - to Woody's horror and disgust - that all is not as it seems. Simone of course, is really a man (immediately obvious, of course, to the audience), thus placing grave insult before impending injury.

Unquestionably the JamBiz team is trying to walk the line between the serious, issues-driven theatre and the broader belly laughs of the roots movement; The
Last Stand instead veers wildly toward both extremes.

Brown's writing and Nairne's blocking are not without merit, but the play tends to lose a lot of its steam when it attempts the reflective.

Campbell strikes the best balance as the hunter-turned-prey, and his prattling about male intuition and the need to propagate are sufficiently shot through with the desperation of a man trying to extricate himself from an awful fix. When he grabs hold of Keisha (enjoyably but inconsistently played by Sharee McDonald Russell) to proclaim his love for her, one senses he may not be speaking only out of expediency.
For her part, Prendergast is convincing, arguably too much so, as the dominatrix. When she seeks to muster up sympathy for her character (her attempts included
trotting out a wedding dress, symbol of a previous occasion of being jilted), she falls flat. Then again, it's hard to muster up sympathy for a woman who's versed in the workings of a tongue clamp, wields an axe with ease, and carries on a relationship with a man known only as "Killa".

The Simone character is superfluous, the writer's most blatant cheap laughs device. Christopher Hutchinson pours his all into his androgynous moment, but the play would have reached its conclusions without him, and were it not for his humorous exchanges with Bubbles (everyone of the characters has those), would have been totally unwelcome.

The set, imagined devoid of the torture paraphernalia and ghastly pictures on the walls, is ordinary, and the remaining production values are serviceable, if not spectacular.

You'll certainly laugh (even if occasionally in spite of yourself) at The Last Stand, but at the end, you'll leave not entirely convinced that the author's self-proclaimed fascination with man-woman relationships has been sufficiently or competently explored.