Quantity with quality

energy piece was a highlight of the festival.

'The Affair', written and directed by Rayon McLean, revolves around the conflict between a wife and her pastor-husband as he dresses for church one Sunday morning. She is upset because he is more devoted to the church than to her. While entertaining, the play lacks a resolution.

Fae Ellington's one-woman play, 'Mi Nuh Ready' is about an old woman reminiscing on her past and occasionally praying to Jesus, whom she wants to meet in heaven but, as the title indicates, she is not ready to go just yet.

Fabian Thomas' 'Devon' shows an inner-city father trying to stop his gangster son from going off to fight for the area leader, to whom the young man is devoted. Thomas' characters came alive, but there was no change in the characters' positions - which may be the point of the play.

'No Place at the Table', a dramatic monologue by the late Earl Warner, was visually well-staged by Joan Belfon. It's about a gay man who laments that every time he makes love he breaks the law. He moves from being sorry for himself to being defiantly himself.

'Oh John', written and directed by Tyane Robinson, was yet another play showing one- character, an old woman, reminiscing. She recalls the various happy and sad events of her, life, with the assistance of a picture album.

Patrick Brown's 'The Bucket List' is about a mother and daughter quarrelling about the daughter's many lovers, especially her current one. The play provoked much laughter, except at the end when the playwright imposed his own agenda on his story and dragged a bloodstained knife into the scene. The red gore suddenly turned the play 'black'.

While structurally twists in the tails of 10-minute plays (and short stories) are desirable, the authors also need to maintain consistency in the work's tone.

On Sunday afternoon, I was downtown again, at the National Gallery, which was having its regular Last Sundays programme.

A month before, I had heard Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna formally open the current exhibition, In Retrospect: 40 Years of the National Gallery of Jamaica. I went back last week for 'Soulscapinig', choreographed by Oneil Pryce and danced by three members of his company, the Barre None Dance Collective.

The performers, Neila Ebanks, Sophia McKain and Kayon Wray, danced on two levels of the building while reciting an amalgam of poems from Tim M. West's collection, 'Soul is Unfinished Business'. The dance was interesting and innovative, but it was difficult for the audience to hear the words of the poem which, Pryce told me after the dance, is an examination of the weight, smell and general nature of the soul.

A friend of a friend, visiting from Guyana and attending Eight by Ten, remarked that nothing like the entertainment offered in Kingston is available in his country.

Nor anywhere else in the Caribbean, I suspect.