Caption: Errol Fabien and George Gonzalez in Twarse. Photo: Prior Beharry/AZP News
AZP News Play Review
By Prior Beharry
THE chemistry between Errol Fabien and George Gonzalez is evident, even when on stage playing vagrants on Charlotte Street in Port of Spain.
Friends for decades and both dealing with addiction, the duo have come together in “Twarse,” a play that shows homeless people have opinions, feelings, and relationships too.
The play, written by Fabien, premiered at Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies in Valsayn on Friday evening.
Two vagrants (Fabien and Gonzalez) lie on the ground as garbage is strewn around them. They get up and sing some verses of Sparrow’s “Lying Excuses,” setting the stage with the implication that they both now live on the streets due to their infidelity. Stories of their escapades abound, with Fabien hiding in a bag among other bottles in the bedroom of a bottle collector who suspects his wife is being unfaithful. Luckily for Fabien, he is thrown out of the window with broken bottles and comes away with bruised ribs and a “buss head” among other injuries.
Gonzalez had a fun time wooing beautiful women who also feted him with food and drink because they didn’t know better since during Jouvert everyone looked the same “stink” way.
Fabien told AZP News that the idea of the play came to him after its executive producer Johnny Q told Gonzalez to “let Fabien write a play” for both of them.
“I never confronted vagrancy because not many stories are told from this perspective; I was there when I was a drug addict,” Fabien said, admitting to the problem that almost destroyed his life.
He added, “The ultimate price for infidelity is losing everything. We sometimes have to face the reality of having it all and losing it all.”
In “Twarse,” a friendship is evident between the two characters, with the lines of fact and fiction sometimes blurred. When Gonzalez wants to visit his wife, Fabien agrees to pay for the taxi with some of the $200,000 he has in his pockets as he doesn’t trust anyone to keep it.
When Gonzalez asks where he got that money, Fabien says his family once had a lot of properties renting on places such as Boardwalk and Park Place and he kept some cash for himself, as every time he made a round, he collected…
Because the issue of infidelity is present, the play is definitely for those 18 and over, as girth and penis size are topics discussed quite openly.
Gonzalez even noted he was a “peeologist” holding a PhD in the subject of urine and can tell whether two puddles of pee were that of a man or a woman—men drip because they shake, and women’s are zigzag because they keep looking around to see if anyone was watching when urinating in public.
Before the main attraction, there was Trinidad and Tobago’s first openly gay comedian, Stephon John, whose sexual orientation may have started when his father told him to study his books and not girls. “He didn’t say doh study boys,” John quipped.
Neil “Abebele” Baptiste is a humorous calypsonian who can hold his own concert.
Before “Twarse,” Fabien and Gonzalez performed their own skits with items taken from a suitcase on stage. When Fabien put on a dress with breasts and all, he was the wife who wanted to know if her husband would get another wife after she died. Of course, the new wife would be younger, and Gonzalez would change their bed with “too much memories” and even have a shrine for his previous wife that the new young one could neither pass in front of nor clean the doorknob. It ends with Fabien asking if the younger wife would even use her (Fabien’s) golf clubs, to which Gonzalez replies, “No, she’s left-handed.”
Another skit was in a bank where Fabien had forgotten his identification when he went to cash a cheque. The teller, Gonzalez, told Fabien that without any ID he had to prove that he was indeed Errol Fabien. He sang his hit calypso “Ato Tea Party” and subsequently got his cheque cashed. Cricket superstar Brian Lara, played by Fabien, also didn’t have ID and had to use the guard’s baton as a bat to make a stroke that proved he was the real cricketing maestro. And when the prime minister came to cash his cheque without his ID and said he didn’t know anything and couldn’t think of anything to prove who he was, the teller asked if he wanted his cash in small or large bills.
In the programme, “Twarse” director Tafar Chia Lewis said she embraced the principles of Tony Hall’s Jouvay popular theatre process—relax, listen, and observe.
The stage manager was Nicole Wung Chung, with assistance from stage crew members Keiza Huggings and Natoya Jones.
