Pe­ter Ray Blood

It was a de­light­ful way to spend a Sun­day evening; at­tend­ing Time & Tide Wait for No Man at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, by No­ble Dou­glas Lil­liput Foun­da­tion for the Arts.

The hall was packed as the young artistes of Lil­liput Chil­dren's The­atre (LCT) sang and danced their way in­to the hearts of pa­trons.

Di­rect­ed by 3Canal's Wen­dell Man­war­ren, the pro­gramme be­gan with the ba­bies of LCT do­ing their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of a sailor dance to the mu­sic of De Mighty Tri­ni's Sail­ing. This item caused much amuse­ment as no two dancers of the large en­sem­ble were in sync with each oth­er. The cos­tume de­sign­ers were at their best with the lit­tle ones wear­ing sailor and tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val char­ac­ter cos­tumes.

The Jour­ney Now Start, per­formed to the strains of Chris "Tam­bu" Her­bert's ca­lyp­so of the same name, was next. For this and en­su­ing acts, the se­niors, in­ters and ju­niors held the spot­light as crews of a fleet of ships de­cid­ed to mutiny, throw­ing their cap­tains in­to the brigs.

De­spite the best ef­forts of vet­er­an sound en­gi­neer Frank Agar­rat and his crew, the grem­lins in Queen's Hall's acoustic sys­tem played hav­oc as far as au­dio was con­cerned. It was a chal­lenge to dis­cern the words of the young ac­tors and dancers for most of the pro­duc­tion.

In con­trast was the light­ing done by Knol­ly Whiskey, an­oth­er vet­er­an, and his team. The light­ing de­sign, which was spot on through the pro­duc­tion, was par­tic­u­lar­ly ef­fec­tive in the Pull To­geth­er item.

One of the strong and en­dear­ing in­gre­di­ents of the pro­duc­tion was its choice of mu­sic. In ad­di­tion to some pow­er­ful rhythms by DJ Rawkus, Laz­abeam, Ritzam­ba and Ever­ald "Red­man" Wat­son, there were some beau­ti­ful tracks from the song­books of David Rud­der, 3 Canal, Roar­ing Li­on, Raf Robert­son, Aaron Dun­can, An­dre Tanker, John "Bud­dy" Williams, Bill Trot­man, Eti­enne Charles, Ted­dyson John, 5 Star Ak­il and Bun­ji Gar­lin.

As the plot un­fold­ed, the ma­raud­ing sailors, drunk and lost at sea, freed their cap­tains and even­tu­al­ly found their way to Trinidad. Docked in the har­bour on J'Ou­vert morn­ing, they went ashore and be­came im­mersed in Car­ni­val, min­gling with the Tri­ni form of sailors.

In the end, all's well that ends well and a sailor is a sailor as the cur­tain call fea­tured John's hit singe Allez Allez.

Artis­tic di­rec­tor No­ble Dou­glas, now a 70-year-old grand dame of dance, de­serves no end of ac­cla­ma­tion, for not just her many years in dance, but for the ex­cel­lent and pos­i­tive work she con­tin­ues to do with the young chil­dren of our na­tion.

One of the com­po­nents that stood out in last week­end's pro­duc­tion was "move­ment." The stage was kept vi­brant and alive for two riv­et­ing hours by the per­pet­u­al mo­tion of the young per­form­ers.