Ti-Jean excites at Queen's Hall

3canal’s Ti-Jean and His Brothers was a wonderful rendition of Derek Walcott’s classic folklore play about a deal with the Devil.

Sunday was the final day for Ti-Jean, which opened on Thursday in Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s. Newsday attended the gala event on Friday to review the contemporary take on Walcott’s 1958 play.

Ti-Jean was Walcott’s colonial statement of an ancient St Lucien folk tale he heard when he was a boy in St Mary’s College in Vigie, St Lucia. The Devil, adopting the identity of the plantation owner, was symbolic of the terror colonial bodies faced to get financial stability under the British Empire.

Keep your temper, and if you get the devil vex, you win. That was the challenge laid out to Ti-Jean, played by Ateion Jones, and his brothers Gros-Jean, played by Roland Yearwood, and Mi-Jean, played by Guyanese award-winning actor Nickose Layne, who made his TT theatre debut in this play.

Gros-Jean is the brother who uses brute strength to overcome his obstacles. Mi-Jean depends highly on his intellect and book smarts and tries to debate the devil. Ti-Jean, the youngest and most cunning, uses his kindness, laissez-faire attitude and wit to infuriate the Devil.

Gros-Jean, a proud and powerful man, cannot stand his ego getting diminished as the Devil terrorises him on his break.

Mi-Jean, who is so arrogant as to believe he is smarter than everyone else, is foiled by his inability to outwit a goat, getting told he’s nothing more than a shaved monkey and a descendent of the ape.

Both brothers fail to keep their calm because of their ego, but Ti-Jean, who approaches all aspects of life with reverence and respect such as the crapaud, bird, firefly and cricket, chooses to disrupt the Devil’s lifestyle by castrating and burning down all the elements that made the Devil a plantation owner.

This was an urban Ti-Jean, set in contemporary Trinidad with the characters wearing vests, tights and jumpsuits. Even the Devil, played by Renaldo “Red” Frederick, wore sweatpants and a long jacket that looked like his version of a hoodie.

Fredrick gave a powerful performance as the Devil – the best performance of his this reviewer has seen. He was captivating on stage from start to finish, commanding the attention of the audience. His boisterous bellows on stage were only equally matched by his devilish charm as the Planter. Though he was the antagonist, he had a charismatic likeability that keep the viewer hooked on his every word.

Karian Ford, who played Bolom, an aborted foetus who works as the Devil’s messenger, also performed spectacularly on stage as she contorted her body to fit the grotesque nature of her character. She was literally crawling around on a crab back on stage showing impressive flexibility and gymnastic ability.

Overall the Ti-Jean cast was strong, with veteran actors such as Cecilia Salazar, Bird, and Arnold Goindhan, Crapaud.

Though the play was captivating and entertaining from start to finish, there were a few problems with the audio. The band performed exquisitely, with music by Andre Tanker, but overpowered most of the singing, which meant that the messages in the songs were lost. Coupled with poor diction from almost every cast member while singing made it difficult to fully get what they were saying.

Now that TT is in a post-colonial period and has been a republic for 43-years, is a play like Ti-Jean still representative of the plantation system of 1958?

Each brother represents a form of opposition against colonialisation: strength, intelligence and defiance.

The country is still bursting with race relation politics, discussions of ancestral wealth from the plantation class, reparations and poverty. There still exists families who carry the trope of the three brothers who are strong, intelligent and cunning working against their own personal devil in the urban cane fields of TT.

A story such as Ti-Jean and his brothers is a fantastic reminder of the different devils post-colonial spaces still have to defeat in 2019.