Cori Baynes

Greed, de­cep­tion, dis­loy­al­ty, in­grat­i­tude, as well as undy­ing love and for­give­ness, were just a few of the emo­tions por­trayed as tal­ent­ed young ac­tors and ac­tress­es brought to life the pages of the clas­sic Shake­speare tragedy, King Lear. Led by the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Deb­o­rah Jean Bap­tiste-Samuel, the play, which ran for four nights from Feb­ru­ary 19, was put on by the mem­bers of the Or­a­to­ry Foun­da­tion and staged be­fore mas­sive crowds at the Na­pari­ma Bowl. With many Form Six stu­dents who are study­ing the play for their ex­am­i­na­tions in at­ten­dance, the cast suc­cess­ful­ly took the au­di­ence on an emo­tion­al jour­ney through sit­u­a­tions just as ap­plic­a­ble in to­day's so­ci­ety as they were then. For three hours, all eyes were fixed at­ten­tive­ly sta­ge­side as King Lear, once rich and pow­er­ful, al­lowed van­i­ty and flat­tery to get the bet­ter of him and was re­duced to de­spair and pover­ty by two of his three daugh­ters, Goner­il and Re­gan, who want­ed all of his wealth for them­selves.

How­ev­er, the third, Cordelia, who was cut out of her share of the in­her­i­tance, gen­uine­ly loved her fa­ther and re­turned to his side in his hour of need. Loud ap­plause her­ald­ed the cast at the end of each scene and many pa­trons com­ment­ed and com­pared the sis­ters to peo­ple in their im­me­di­ate lives. "Boy dem girls mov­ing re­al greedy jus like some peo­ple I know," said one male pa­tron to his friend. "The sad thing is that the daugh­ter that re­al­ly check for him is the one that he dissed," he con­tin­ued. Af­ter the pro­duc­tion, pa­trons were high in their praise of the cast, which they felt de­liv­ered a com­mend­able per­for­mance. "This play was re­al­ly good," said one fe­male pa­tron as she walked out of the venue. "Not on­ly was the cast on point, but it is top­i­cal be­cause there are peo­ple who are present­ly go­ing through sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions in their lives."

Speak­ing af­ter­ward, Bap­tiste-Samuel said that her mem­bers per­formed ad­mirably to de­liv­er a pro­duc­tion that the au­di­ence en­joyed. "Our young peo­ple are ex­treme­ly gift­ed and ready to put their cre­ative tal­ents to good work," she said. Not­ing that the play was a part of the Form Six syl­labus, she added that the pro­duc­tion could not have been staged at a bet­ter time. "I in­sist on do­ing what is on the schools syl­labus and they are writ­ing it for ex­ams so the stu­dents will ben­e­fit." "We have moved the play from the page to the stage and I think the stu­dents have a prop­er per­spec­tive on Shake­speare's plays now." "The tim­ing is good for re­vi­sion. It was like a liv­ing tu­to­r­i­al."