It’s splendid to hear the Orange Tree rocking with raucous laughter, as Paul Miller continues with a notable first season’s programming as artistic director. It was a timely idea to revive Mustapha Matura’s 1974 Evening Standard Award-winning black comedy set in the years surrounding Trinidadian independence; the play still has much to say about balances of power both personal and political, but there can be no denying that it is a baggy piece of writing.
Mas, or Masquerade, is Trinidad’s riotous pre-Lenten carnival when work is abandoned and anything goes, and the plot pivots around two very different episodes of Mas. In the first, pre-independence, Samuel (Seun Shote) is a lowly assistant to affable tailor Ramjohn (Johann Myers). Yet once the People’s National Movement comes to power, Samuel is vastly elevated over his old master and ethnic tensions simmer in different ways.
It’s refreshing at this sometimes stately venue to see a drama presented with such attack, but the trouble with Paulette Randall’s exuberant production is that it plays to diminishing returns. As the performances get broader in the second half, they veer dangerously close to some of the racial stereotypes that The Scottsboro Boys skewered so elegantly and that makes for awkward viewing.
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Shote, however, remains dynamically watchable throughout and reminds us that, underneath its flamboyance, Mas represents the opposite of playing.
Until April 11 (020 8940 3633, orangetreetheatre.co.uk)
