It takes three to tangle in Les Coteaux

To what lengths would a woman go to keep a man?

The Les Coteaux Close Connection Cultural Club explored this question on Thursday night during its 2022 Tobago Heritage Festival presentation: Folks Tales and Superstition at the Tablepiece Recreation Ground.

Sponsored by Republic Bank Ltd, the community’s production was titled, It Takes Three To Tangle: May The Best One Win.

It covered issues such as infidelity, dishonesty, distrust, spite and vindictiveness.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Les Coteaux play without some element of obeah woven into the script.

The club’s president, Carion Job, said such scenarios are common in Les Coteaux’s heritage presentations.

“You can’t get rid of the obeah. We either have the man tying the woman or the woman tying the man,” she told Newsday before the show.

Job jokingly encouraged patrons to take notes of the ways in which they can hold on to the significant others in their lives.

As was expected, the play, which lasted close to four hours, had the large audience in stitches. Two large screens were erected on either side of the stage, offering patrons clear vantage points.

Among those in the audience were former THA chief secretary Kelvin Charles and his wife Catherine, and members of the Tobago Performing Arts Company.

Job portrayed Dora, a full-figured mother of two with seemingly low self-esteem. She is in a long-term, common-law relationship with Darwin, the father of her children.

But Darwin, with whom she has remained faithful, is also in relationships with two other women named Rosie and Maggie.

Rosie is a feisty, confrontational woman from the village, who frequently taunts Dora, believing she has the upper hand. Darwin has also fathered her four children.

Maggie, a seemingly ambitious younger woman from Mt St George, also has a son with Darwin. But she is later reunited with her husband.

The scenes with Dora and Rosie were especially hilarious. Equally funny were those involving their children, mostly at the village river.

After the welcome procession, Les Coteaux’s theme song and an African dance, the club went straight into their presentation.

It opened with Dora lamenting the way in which her life had turned out.

“Me never thought me wudda meet that day here. If anybody wudda tell me that me, Dora – Dorothy – wudda be living this kinda life. I wudda tell them they lie. Not me,” she said while handwashing clothes in a basin.

Saying she was not “ordained to live this kind of life,” Dora recalled that Darwin had promised to love and take care of her.

“De man come home by meh mother, tell meh mother he go marrid me and take good care of meh. But instead, he put me in a house. Me nuh say he doh take good care of meh inno.

“But he does take good care of me. He does take good care of a next one, a next one and me nah know who else.”

Referring to her two children, she said, “I want to be the wife of one husband. Not a husband to many wives. It is unfair.”

To add insult to injury, Dora said Rosie often taunts and disrespects her.

“When they see me by the road they want to throw talk for me. Dem a tease meh.”

In an ensuing scene, Rosie enters Dora’s yard for plaintain and they engage in a heated argument, which almost turns violent.

Darwin, who appears to have skilfully juggled his relationships, pledge his love for all three women during the early part of the play.

But as the production unfolds, Darwin’s secrets are revealed, eventually leading to his death after three days of illness. His daughter Lizzie observed that he was unresponsive.

His demise began after Rosie, desperate to hold on to him, sought the help of the village obeah man, Mr Dickie.

Dickie had offered several concoctions, including lacing his food with crapaud powder.

In the final scene, Rosie and her children are overcome with grief. But she accuses Dora of killing Darwin.

Nosy neighbour Mildred also visited the house and gives her advice on properly securing the body.

Rosie later asks her eldest son, Eugene, to tell Dora about the death. On hearing the news, Dora bursts into tears and informs her two children.

Initially, she did not want to see the body but decided to go eventually.

“Rosie kill Darwin. Ah know she wudda kill him one day,” she cried.

The villagers later visited the home to extend their condolences. Rosie also told them that Darwin had married her before he died.

A villager accused Dickie of wanting all the women in the village for himself.

He also told the villagers that Rosie had visited Dickie to get Darwin’s house and land.

“Rosie, yuh too nasty…Remember, the sins of the parents will fall on your children."