REVIEW: NTACTT’s Moon on the Rise

After their return to Errol John’s classic was cancelled in 2022, The National Theatre Arts Company of Trinidad and Tobago’s revival of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, has finally seen the light of day. Directed by Marvin Ishmael, and presented on September 24th and 25th at the National Academy for the Performing Arts, the production – which incorporated live accompaniment by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, felt like a clear mission to return this Caribbean yard play to local audiences, while celebrating its cast of seasoned company actors.

Errol John’s drama, written in the late 1950s, is about the cramped hopes and quiet desperations of a postwar Port of Spain. This production leans into those tensions: the yard’s bright communal life sits uneasily alongside poverty and the urge to escape. Ishmael’s director’s note frames the play as a meditation on the “enduring struggles and resilience of Caribbean communities,” and that intention is evident in many of the production’s choices. Moon on a Rainbow Shawl shows a tenement community struggling with poverty, yearning, social constraint, and dreams of escape. At its center are Sophia (the matriarch), her husband Charlie, and Ephraim (a tram driver who long dreams of migrating to England). Around them swirl the children, the neighbors, and the tensions of love, ambition, and survival.

Where the production succeeds most is in visual and environmental realism. Narad Mahabir’s set is a triumph of remarkable detail. One truly believes in the narrow, cluttered yard, the wattle fences, the peeling walls, the dignity buried beneath neglect. It is “believably a tenement yard,” and in that world, the actors move with convincing ease. The costumes, hair, and make-up work largely in concert with that realism. The period is convincingly evoked, and the characters look like they might have walked out of Port of Spain in the 1940s. 

Despite that strong foundation, the technical elements at times pull the audience out of the world. The opening overture, while lush and melodic, felt a little overlong, delaying the start of the drama. The orchestral and recorded sounds sometimes failed to integrate cleanly with the onstage action: a downpour sound abruptly cut off rather than being softly attenuated; musical interludes sometimes overwhelmed actors’ voices; and microphone amplification was inconsistent. Some lines failed to reach the audience with clarity.

Lighting, too, betrayed its own unevenness. While the palette choices and moods were thoughtfully designed, the execution occasionally neglected the actors’ faces. There are moments when the person speaking is left in shadow or half-lit. And when thunder boomed in a scene, there was no apparent lighting response, no flash or dimming to match the effect. These are not fatal flaws, but they do weaken moments meant to stir.

On the organisational side, Tonya Evans’s stage management is an asset. The show began on time; intermission was handled cleanly; transitions were unobtrusive. There were no glaring errors or lapses that broke the flow. In sum, there is little to fault in stage discipline or running order.

The heart of the production, of course, lies in its acting. Shivonne Church-Issacs as Mavis is consistently one of the evening’s pleasures. She inhabits Mavis’s limbs, gait, posture, cadence, gestures and airs with conviction. Though not what one might imagine as the archetypal “wiry” Mavis, she makes us accept her as fully and definitively part of the yard. Syntyche Bishop’s Rosa is a steady presence: warm, believable, emotionally grounded; but in the closing scenes, when Ephraim makes his exit for Liverpool, her placement on stage right (rather than being inside the room as indicated in the script) left her purpose in that moment unclear, occasionally pulling focus from the action unfolding on stage left.

Nicholai Salcedo’s Ole Mac is a standout: his voice, pace, physicality, and confidence ring true. He carries that tricky role with assurance. Nicholas Subero as Ephraim is solid, there is strength in his bearing and in the key emotional moments, but I felt he could take more risks. In quieter confrontations, in scenes of vulnerability, a bit more daring or rawness would deepen our trust in his stakes.

On the other hand, Louris Lee-Sing (Sophia Adams) and Stenae Malchan (Esther Adams) would benefit from further development. At times, Lee-Sing’s Sophia felt tentative: I questioned whether I fully believed her internal contradictions, the stern matriarch who holds tenderness in reserve. It might be a matter of chemistry, voice projection, or deeper character integration. Malchan’s Esther occasionally sounded too rehearsed, as if reciting rather than living the part. Her portrayal of a child sometimes veered into the over-emphatic. She masks herself at moments, which is also compounded when her ribbons occasionally obscures her face, and some of her blocking suggests she may just be following direction, rather than living truthfully as the character. In the opening, for example, when Esther follows Ephraim in a circular path, the logic and affect of her movement felt unclear, perhaps lost in the way her lines were delivered.

That said, many moments in the evening offered genuine reward. The audience responded with laughter at the play’s comic relief; they winced and shifted at Ole Mac’s awkward advances toward Rosa. At the same time, there were stretches, moments in transitions, or slower scenes, when my attention dipped or I found myself nodding off. Perhaps, though, that reflects less on the production’s execution, and more on the inherent pacing demands of the script itself.

This revival carries emotional weight beyond its narrative. The yard evokes not just a specific community, but a memory: many in the audience must recall neighborhood yards, shared dreams, and generational movement. For me, the play triggered memories of my own childhood yard and the ways my family sought advancement through education. I left the theatre thinking about how far Trinidad and Tobago has come, the progress, the possibilities, the remaining distance.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Simeon Chris Moodoo is a Trinbagonian national and regional award-winning playwright and director whose work has been peer-reviewed and published. An educator, cultural scholar, and practitioner, he is currently pursuing an MPhil in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Moodoo has professional experience in all aspects of theatre production and performance and is trained in Kalinda and Rope Jab.

With a deep interest in the persistence and advancement of Caribbean culture, theatre, and performance, he brings a wealth of experience in cultural facilitation, fight choreography, and Caribbean performance traditions. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Halqa Productions, a Founding Director of the Trinidad and Tobago Performing Arts Network (TTPAN), and a Director at the Holistic Learning Center.

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