by Cathy Buffonge
A most captivating children’s musical drama performance, ‘Under the Mango Tree’, took place during St Patrick’s Week, conceived by drama teacher Alys Jenkins and music teacher Rebecca Chalmers. The show was the result of a weekly music and drama workshop for around thirty children, held by Alys and Rebecca at the Hilltop family centre. The children themselves were involved in creating the drama, writing the script and the songs, and all of them performed outstandingly.
The show started with two children (Jermahri Meade and Kiera Ryan) deciding to go in search of the Mermaid of Chance’s Peak (Rhonnieka Sweeney), and their adventures on the way: meeting up with Orioles, Arawaks, Africans, Erin (the lady with the harp on Montserrat’s flag) among others, and finally the King of Redonda (Rhonil Lewis). Eventually the King tries to swim to Redonda (‘But I can’t swim!’) and comes back to marry the Mermaid so there’s a happy ending.
It was a pleasure to see the beautiful Mermaid costume worn by Miss Madou at the recent Queen Show again in use, as well as St Augustine School’s African costumes. Too often Festival costumes are put aside never to be used again, such a waste of all the skill, creativity and effort that went into making them.
There was plenty of humour in the show. The popular song ‘Dig a tunnel’ was adapted as ‘Dig a tunnel from Montserrat to Redonda!’ There was a brief encounter with a stop sign and Public Works digging up the road, with the comment ‘But they dug it up last week!’ The show was held at the old Salem Primary School, and the scenery added greatly to the show, with stage design done by Peter Filleul and team.
This was a beautiful performance, and also much enjoyed by the children who took part. Looking around the audience the majority were adults, and it would be so nice if more children could see it, although I realize this would be hard to organize. Congratulations to all involved in this innovative and enchanting show.
In addition to Cathy’s long to be published article, (we apologise to her), there public exclamations on how they felt about the exciting production.
“I tip my hat to Rebecca and her team for putting themselves through all of this just to ensure that the children had a good time it’s absolutely breath taking.”
“I thought it was really good, it’s amazing what they put together in the time that they had …I like the comedy, I thought it was really funny…”
“I think it was really fantastic for the short period of time that the kids had for this production.”
Next week we will give a full report and recapture the production on how it came about and how it was put together.
See more pictures on our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/set=a.10151378837365852.1073741833.203080105851&type=3
