Basil Dawkins’ tragi-comedy incites empathy
Published:Thursday | January 4, 2024 | 12:10 AMMichael Reckord/Gleaner Writer
“It’s gripping from beginning to end.” That’s one patron’s feeling about Basil Dawkins’ latest play, Once Upon a Watch Night, playing at the Little Little Theatre, Tom Redcam Drive.
The prolific playwright-producer, who has been staging plays at the rate of about one per year since 1980 when he produced his first play, usually receives similar comments on his shows. However, he is particularly pleased with the audience response to this one, mainly because they have been ‘boisterous’.
That reaction is, of course, only one of many that would indicate the empathy that everyone associated with a production desires. Empathy shows that the audience is emotionally engaged and they probably have a hit on their hands. On Boxing Day when I saw the play, the empathetic reactions varied from laughter, through distress to angry shouts at the actors.
The show’s success stems from the talent and decades of experience of key contributors, including the playwright and actors Dennis Titus and Deon Silvera, set designer Robin Baston, set builder Patrick Russell, and Quindell Ferguson, who assisted the director in dressing the set.
Toni-Kay ‘ T.K.’ Dawkins, the director, celebrated her 10th year in that capacity in October of last year, marking a decade in the role. Although she may be considered a relative newcomer, being the playwright’s daughter, she grew up immersed in the world of theatre. Even while studying abroad in college, she continued to learn about show business by avidly observing performances.
It’s impossible for the viewer to separate the work of the director from the natural creativity of the actors, but what we get from Titus and Silvera is tremendous energy and total authenticity. The playwright provides them with characters and a story that both they and the audiences can identify with. And, with the director, they have come up with enhancing activity and blocking (movement around the stage).
The situation we are invited to watch is sketched on the production’s poster: ‘A woman detains her married lover preventing him from going home on New Year’s Eve.’
Analysing it shows the intriguing potential of the story – a relationship gone wrong, a dynamic between a jailer and the jailed, with the unusual twist of the jailer being a woman and a captive man wanting to return home, not just any night, but on New Year’s Eve.
Cleverly, the playwright does not present characters who are entirely right or completely wrong. One can empathise with both, though not at the same time and a significant source of interest we feel as the play proceeds is the shifting of our sympathy back and forth between the characters.
Dawkins usually classifies his plays as “dramadies,” that is, drama mixed with comedy. I see this one as a tragi-comedy, because the conflict goes so deep into the psyches of the two characters.
If the funny moments didn’t keep getting in the way, it would certainly be possible to see this work as serious drama, and it certainly does have a disastrous conclusion, which will not be revealed here. I can understand some women empathising with the woman, feeling pity in the end, and some men empathising with the man, feeling terror, especially those women and men who are unfaithful.
There is a second cast waiting in the wings – Pablo Hoilett and Angela Jarrett, who will alternate with the current one. Dawkins told me about differences in interpretation among the cast, so it will be interesting to see it a second time. I’m sure I won’t be the only one going for seconds.
Show times are Tuesdays to Fridays at 8:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m., 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.