Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Donald 'Emperor' Excell - Rudolph Brown

At times 'Cupid', all in white but bowless, moved across the stage with lines of poetry. The 'Husband' often seemed dour and when he took centrestage strong emotions came to the fore. The 'Barmaid' had colourful hair, the 'Wife' was all naturally coiffed and the 'Lover' had an open shirt to go with his bold posture.

And Scarlett Behari, Donald 'Iceman' Anderson, Kerry-Ann Lewis, Charl Baker and Norty Antoine, playing the various characters, in that order, all spoke what was 'Inna Mi Heart', as they dramatised segments of Joan Andrea Hutchinson's book of love poetry.

Sunday's production at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, under the auspices of M.A.D.K.O.W. and directed by Michael Daley, was not a straight reading of the various pieces. Instead, after opening poems from Emperor the dramatists, scripts in hand, made good going of a 'quilt' of words in which parts of poems were often utilised, the ending lines of one a direct contrast or a natural fit with the opening lines of the next.

All this was played out against a simple set, the bar to one side and a low bed to another. The props, too, were few, a bunch of red roses carried on by one ardent swain, a striking exception.

So, the Barmaid was incongruously 'Shy' in the opening poem, then the Lover confessed his emotions 'Even Inna Me Sleep'. There was a thematically consistent transition between the Barmaid ending 'Love Yuh Inside Mi Head' with "but wi deh inside mi head" and the lover starting 'Mi Nuh Want Nobody Else' with "yu deh pon mi min', all di time".

And there was laughter at the contrast between the Wife's ending "nutten nuh certain, wi love mighta flop, but meck wi gi dis ting a try" from 'Meck Wi Gi Dis Ting a Try' and the Husband's stern opening "It done, it done, it done" from the poem with the same title.

And Cupid, who moved through the players, spoke directly to the audience when she asked "wha yu so afraid of? Yuh scared fi fall in love? Too much a wi fraid fi use di 'L' word, Figet the fear".

Cupid closed with 'Hot But Hush', the audience showed its enthusiasm and Hutchinson took the stage. "The fulfillment of what happens to you as a writer, the completeness, is this process," she said.

Her coment on the drama-tisation was, "people are doing things with the work I did not think of". And there was laughter when she said that she sat in the audience and, without patting herself on the back too much, though, "this thing is good".

"I love it, I love it," Joan Andrea Hutchinson said of the production.

"Thank you very much. This is what makes it worth it for me as a writer. And I sat there saying the second book of poetry must come out," she said. She added that she was in fact working on a collection of 'Pain Poems', exploring that side of love.

And Hutchinson read a number of poems from 'Inna Mi Heart', including 'Mi Jus' Love Yu', 'Big People Game' and 'Tug No Show Love', saying of the last that she could never do it the justice which Winston 'Bello' Bell had at the launch of 'Inna Mi Heart'.