review

Well shiver me timbers!

Theatre Guild spoofs piracy, etc.

a review by Eric Jackson

A few years ago, the Theatre Guild of Ancon was the only thespian organization to put on a holiday season show with a Christmas theme. Times have changed, and there were at least three other Christmas shows onstage this year in Panama, some with Theatre Guild veterans deeply involved. Meanwhile, the Guild has kept up its tradition of putting on a family-oriented show just before the holidays, but this year it chose to vary the theme. As in an English-style pirate farce, performed partly in drag, with lip-synching song and dance routines and a cast befitting the English-speaking community at The Crossroads of the World that ranged in age from six years to eligibility for jubilado discounts.

This was comedy, said to be harder than drama to effectively perform, and the cast did have the audience laughing, even about such things as betrayal and torture. (Aren't those the things that pirates do, after all?)

This was a passing of the torch in more ways than one. On the more somber side, co-director Vernon Skitt died during the preparations for this play, but the show went on under the guidance of Bernard Callahan. But as Vernon passed off the stage of Panama's English-language community theater, all these kids, from the International School of Panama, the Balboa Academy, the Oxford School, the Yitzhak Rabin School and other institutions, made their entrance. This scene most definitely has a future.

The show's stellar performance was by Eric Levy, who played Aunt Sally Forth in drag. The program --- the good artwork for which deserves special mention of its creator, Pedro Caicedo --- lists Levy's ambition as a desire “to rule the world.” As Simón Bolívar once remarked, Panama would make a good capital for such a thing. But after seeing this show, one wonders if Levy will vault to international acclaim in a future production of “Pinky and The Brain.” He's good enough, but that would be one amazing make-up job.

That will have to wait a bit. The Guild's next show, to be staged in February, will be a production of Oscar Wilde's “The Importance of Being Earnest.”