J’can pantomime in South Florida this weekend
Published:Saturday | September 30, 2023 | 12:06 AM
The Louise Bennett-Coverley Heritage Council will stage a 2023 edition of their pantomime production Ol’ Time Sinting Come Back Again at the Lauderhill Performing Arts Center on September 30 and October 1.
The pantomime will be in remembrance of the late Louise Bennett-Coverley, more popularly know as Miss Lou, and late priest and playwright Father Easton Lee, under the patronage of Jamaica’s Consul General to Miami, Oliver Mair.
Ol’ Time Sinting Come Back Again was written by Norma Darby and Lee and first staged in 2011 to a sold-out audience. The 2023 production will feature a cast of talented actors including Dennis Titus, Dr Sue, Sunita Spencer, Malachi Smith, Father Horace Ward, Marie Gill, Maxine Osbourne and other well-known local personalities. Musical accompaniment will be by the Jamaican Folk Revue and the Tallawah Mento Band.
Jamaican pantomimes, through the work of Bennett-Coverley and Ranny Williams, more popularly know as ‘Mass Ran’, developed into a truly Jamaican theatre event opening annually on Boxing Day , the day after Christmas. Pantomime productions were well supported by the Jamaican audience and have remained a staple on the theatre calendar through current times.
Ol’ Time Sinting Come Back Again tells the story of Vicky, a talented young lady who much to credit of her parents would be the first person from the humble village of Bruk foot Piece to have attended and graduated from college; her lover Eustatius aka Newsy, an aspiring journalist, who had to drop out of college due to the death of his father and Vangie, the not so ambitious and very generous ‘lady’ of the village who swore she would marry Newsy one day. An unbalanced love triangle, amid the struggles and aspirations of the village folks as they pursue their rough and tumble lives, Ol’ Time Sinting Come Back Again shows the eventual happiness shared at the wedding of Vicky. It incorporates singing, dancing, creative and oratorical skills and colourful Jamaican Patois.