Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
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written by Perry Henzell, music and lyrics by Jimmy Cliff, the Maytals, the Melodians and others,
directed by Kerry Michael and Dawn Reid
Mirvish Productions, Canon Theatre, Toronto
August 23, 2009
If you go to The Harder They Come expecting a reggae-infused vacation from reality, think again. Perry Henzell, writer and director of the 1972 cult film of the same name, adapted the movie for the stage in 2006 and retained all the moral and emotional contradictions that made it such an art house hit.
If you’re not adept at Jamaican patois much of the detail in the dialogue will go missing, but the show is so well acted that the plot is still clear. As in the film, Henzell updates the story of 1940s Jamaican hoodlum Ivanhoe Martin to the 1970s and re-imagines him as a country-boy trying to make strike it rich in the big city of Kingston. What he’s got is a gift for singing and song-writing. Jimmy Cliff played Ivan in the film and five of the fifteen songs in the musical are his. What Ivan finds is corruption in every part of society--in all aspects of the music business not to mention in the police and in the marijuana trade. His murderous stand against the establishment makes him an outlaw to the government but a hero to the people.
The production by the Theatre Royal Stratford East and UK Arts, on this the first stop of an international tour, conceives all the action as taking place in a banquet hall with an on-stage band where a “ni-night” or wake for Ivan conjures up his story. Though taken from many sources, the songs all move the action forward or comment upon it. In this context, lyrics to such hits as “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and the title song take on multiple meanings. The British cast, almost all of Jamaican origin, give uniformly excellent performances. As Ivan, Rolan Bell, a rubber-legged triple threat, shows us the dreamer in both the innocent and the outlaw that makes our reaction to him so complex. Lain Gray as his ganja-selling friend Pedro and Joanna Francis as Ivan’s girlfriend Elsa are filled with passion, and the all the rest create a vivid gallery of portraits of Jamaican life. For those who think of reggae as sunny background music, this show should open their eyes to its political content as well as the suffering and joy it expresses, all the more effective for being so exhilarating and infectious.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-07-24.
Photo: Rolan Bell (centre) as Ivan. ©Robert Day.
2009-07-24
The Harder They Come