LOWE GALLERY PRESENTATIONSHTML Copyright © 2001-2002, awsltd.net
Rev David StapledonTwo Bahamian characters came back to life to tell their stories. The Crystal Parrot Players provided three evenings and a matinee performance for schools 2nd-4th May at the Lowe Gallery, Green Turtle Cay, of two solo dramatic portraits of Matt Lowe and Miss Ruby to audiences which became totally absorbed. Author Sandra Riley had researched the life of Matt Lowe amidst her historical studies; her imaginative creation of Miss Ruby was based on the lives of two actual people, relatives of Alton Lowe, and the scripts were written lovingly with Travis Neff and Luisa Black in mind. The whole enterprise was encouraged by Alton Lowe and the Abaco Cultural Society. The Crystal Parrot Players have become a talented team and the fruit of their long and patient labours was wonderful to behold.
In the first half Travis Neff played Matt Lowe, marooned upon the beach on the Isle of Pines, Cuba, after being brutally beaten by the Spanish. As he comes to himself, with the sical, self mocking, and even confessed to being enticed so nearly by the sad charms of Mary Read, one of the notorious female pirates, but the vestige of loyalty to his wife helped him to resist what would have been a fatal attraction leading him to the gallows.
This was part of the precious vein of gold which ran through the harsh story, the old love which he had for his wife and child when years earlier he had become a father in this selfsame place at the tender age of sixteen. After so much adventuring and ending up marooned, one day he saw the sail of a sloop come to rescue him and discovered truly the old love of his life and the incredible joy of his son. Travis Neff gave an intensein wonderfully deep and poetic images. The mariner truly "had our will".
In the second half the intermission was not really needed, so absorbed were we in the stories. Luisa Black played Miss Ruby with the simple props of table, cloth, a bundle of letters, two chairs and the gentle sound of piano playing. The spinster teacher received an imaginary visit and told her story which was set in Green Turtle Cay and Key West. Her life was lived meekly in the call of duty to her uncle and aunt, but from these restraints emerges a love story of sweetness and pathos set against the background of the Spanish American War. At eighteen she fell in love with a naval man who was called away two days before their wedding date. They meet subsequently but his ship, the Maine, was blown up in Havana Harbour with many hands lost. The eventual news that one body is identified and body is his only adds to the pathos. Miss Ruby tells her story with such sweet gt and rejoiced with her in the glorious red sunset of love and love returned, never to be taken from her again.
The night I attended, I believe that Travis and Luisa were inspired by the characters they had become. They did their task with sincerity and conviction, but with a gentle humility too. Theirs was the "art which conceals art" and we could have stayed for hours.
The company's productions are well worth seeing. The script was a masterly combination of historical accuracy and poetic power; the acting varied, full of life but without exaggeration; the costumes so carefully made down the the last detail; subtle lighting and sound effects; and a production which released the drama. We were transported by the charm of the two stories, which exemplified the wise words of T S Eliot: "The end of all our journeying is to arrive back at the beginning, and to know the place for the first time".