Kevon Felmine

It may have not been what pa­trons ex­pect­ed when they heard "Girls on de side," but none the less the RS/RS Pro­duc­tions was as usu­al, pro­duc­ing top notch en­ter­tain­ment. This time, the play Girls on the Side had less sex­u­al con­tent than pre­vi­ous pro­duc­tions but was filled with emo­tion-evok­ing scenes that touched the hearts of the packed house at the Na­pari­ma Bowl, San Fer­nan­do on June 6. The play, writ­ten by Norm Fos­ter, and di­rect­ed by De­bra Bou­caud Ma­son, fea­tured the cast of Nigel Au­guste, Richard Ra­goo­bars­ingh, Leslie Ann Lavine and Car­o­line Tay­lor.

The play's plot in­volves a trip by two broth­ers -Michael (Nigel Au­guste) and Troy (Richard Ra­goo­bars­ingh)-on a get­away week­end in To­ba­go. The two pos­sess to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics as Michael is a care­free and some what ju­ve­nile in­di­vid­ual, who re­lies on his broth­er to get through every as­pect of life. Troy on the oth­er hand is a bit con­ser­v­a­tive, mar­ried and fam­i­ly ori­ent­ed. The two stay at an un­cle's beach house for a week­end of fish­ing, swim­ming and re­lax­ation. At least that is what Michael thinks. Troy's in­ten­tion is to re­veal a dis­heart­en­ing con­fes­sion to his broth­er that he is dy­ing of a ter­mi­nal ill­ness.

At the house, Michael make per­sis­tent ef­forts to con­vince Troy to take the week from work so they can ex­tend their trip. Troy, the re­spon­si­ble man he is, does not even budge. As Michael leaves to get food sup­plies, Troy gets an un­ex­pect­ed vis­it from his un­cle's friends -Mar­i­lyn (Leslie Ann Lavine) and San­dra (Car­o­line Tay­lor). Michael re­turns short­ly af­ter and takes a fan­cy to San­dra's in­tox­i­cat­ing beau­ty and her flir­ta­tious at­ti­tude. The re­main­der of the play runs a gamut of emo­tions and ends on a touch­ing note with Michael and Troy fight­ing each oth­er ver­bal­ly as they can not bear the thought of los­ing each oth­er due to Troy's ter­mi­nal ail­ment.

Girls on the Side is such an emo­tion­al see saw that some pa­trons were even seen shed­ding tears.

The play re­sumes its run on Thurs­day evening at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Fred­er­ick Street, Port-of-Spain.