"Old Story Time'' -- A play by Trevor D. Rhone -- City Hall Theatre -- November 16 to 18.

Sitting through the opening-night performance of the first Bermudian production of acclaimed Jamaican playwright Trevor D. Rhone's "Old Story Time'', it was difficult to fathom that the play was actually pulled from a local stage in 1981, when it was feared that it might have fanned the flames of the widespread labour unrest that was then gripping the Island. Such incredulity, of course, was not the product of any inherent flaw in the play, which cleverly, lyrically and stirringly looks at a mother-son relationship against a wider dramatic backdrop of class and racial conflict. No, the reluctance to believe that anyone could find "Old Story Time'' inciting or revolutionary stems squarely from the West Indian Association of Bermuda's recent production, which, as handled by directors Shirley Christopher and Errol Williams and disappointingly serviced by its cast, couldn't have fanned a campfire, let alone a social movement.

Particularly tragic in last week's production was the disservice that was done to the beauty of Mr. Rhone's words and his complex structuring of scenes. As fashioned by the playwright, "Old Story Time'', which relates the struggles of Miss Aggy and her son through the eyes of an old tale-spinner named Pa Ben, is supposed to serve as both a searing examination of society's many divisions (racial, economic, intellectual) and a fondly rendered homage to the Caribbean's rapidly disappearing (if not already destroyed) oral tradition.

Unfortunately, however, few of the collaborators in the WIA production, which closed on Saturday, seemed up to such complexities. Judging from the audience's reactions on opening night, when the performance was plagued by a litany of staging disasters that included some terribly mistimed lighting effects and long and awkward periods in which nothing at all was happening onstage, the directors, more importantly, hadn't appeared to have gotten a grip on the play's very strong elements of pathos and profundity, settling instead for a base kind of comedy. Of course, there are many aspects of humour in the play, which is rife with colourful West Indian expressions and scenes in which the region's superstitions are playfully lampooned, but there was something terribly wrong, one suspects, in the fact that opening-night spectators were in hysterics during scenes (as when Len is brutalised at prep school or his mother discovers the true identity of his "saviour'') that should have been shattering. Much of this confusion, ultimately, was the doing of the cast members, many of whom frequently flubbed their lines, too often needed prompting and in four out of six performances either totally misread their characters or were horribly miscast. In the critical role of Miss Aggy, for instance, first-time actress Pamela Blackwood whiningly displayed none of the ferociousness or fire -- even during a caning scene -- that the archetypal earth mother demanded, while Huron Vidal, a black actor who was cast as the white George, constantly undermined his very appealing stage presence by walking around in a silly blond fright-wig and regularly forgetting his lines.

Of the major players, only Wilhelm Bourne as the son and the venerable Ron Lightbourne as Pa Ben brought any spark to their portrayals, each of them imbuing their characters with an aura that was both quietly dignified and laden with mischief and charm.

Overall, though, neither of the two could save this production from its obvious lack of vision and numerous technical problems. That said, the definitive Bermudian staging of "Old Story Time'' -- or even one that does any degree of justice to the play -- has yet to be produced.

Danny Sinopoli THEATRE REVIEW REV