THEATRE REVIEW: EL NUMERO UNO
9 Feb'10

Numero Uno unsatisfactory stew

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 2 out of 5

To Allen MacInnis, the artistic director of the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre For Young People, it no doubt seemed like a surefire recipe for a tasty little pepper pot.

With the calendar once again rolling around to Black History Month, something like author Pam Mordecai's heretofore undeveloped play -- a promising stew of Caribbean language and tradition -- no doubt looked like it just might be the perfect dish to serve up as February's plat du jour.

But as any good cook can tell you, there can be many a slip between the plate and the lip -- and now that they're actually serving up Mordecai's handiwork at the Front Street theatre, it's a dish that proves to be more thin gruel than rich stew. It's called EL NUMERO UNO and it opened on the LKTYP mainstage on Thursday.

Well, actually, it opened in the LKTYP mainspace, a semantic clarification necessitated by director ahdri zhina mandiela's strange (some would say ill-advised) decision to stage the work in the round -- a decision taken, it seems, for no better reason than "We can, so we will."

But not only does staging the work on a new circular stage, otherwise superbly designed by Astrid Janson, not serve to enhance the work in any perceptible fashion, it actually impedes its flow, adding completely unnecessary distraction in the wings along the way, just for good measure.

This has all the makings of a charming story -- those portions of it, at least, that manage to filter out to the audience from a cast far more obsessed, it seems, by the complex demands of this unusual staging than with vocal considerations and audience connections that make for riveting theatre, regardless of the audience's age.

Set on a fictitious island in the Caribbean, it is the story of a good natured teen-aged pig, El Numero Uno by name, who is learning to be a cook. When we first meet Uno, played by Andrew Broderick, he is making his leisurely way to the home of his teacher, Chef Trenton (played by Walter Borden), with the ingredients to make a strange and marvelous soup.

But along the way, he's distracted by most of the residents of the island, including a songless bird, a pair of rabbits (John Blackwood and Jajube Mandiela), a holy man named Ras Onelove (Jamie Robinson) along with a few costumed jonkannu masqueraders, just for good measure.

Distracted by all the companionship, Uno finally drops and seriously bruises the precious ingredients he's transporting. And because Chef Trenton's recipe demands only the freshest, unblemished ingredients, the affable young pig has to make a return visit to the market -- a return that results in him being kidnapped by a pair of beastly boars (Robinson and Borden doubling up at the trough, as it were). But before they can make a meal of him, the other residents of his island conspire to free him, in the process freeing the two villainous boars from an evil curse and saving the island as well.

With Lisa Codrington and Sabryn Rock rounding out the cast, this is nothing if not a game ensemble, and they tackle the story's complex linguistic demands -- a patois of English, Spanish, French and African languages -- with respect for both its source and their audience, slowing it down so it can be understood, at least by those who hear it.

But unfortunately, it's a consideration that often slows the action to a crawl too -- a crawl that not even the occasional musical number can overcome. Slow cooking is not a recommended technique for theatrical stews.

EL NUMERO UNO
Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People
Starring the ensemble
Director: ahdri zhina mandiela