Leonie brings 'The Last Enchantment' to life
Published:Monday | June 7, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Actress Leonie Forbes had the 2010 Calabash audience transfixed, obediently journeying into an era when Jamaican society was ripe for change.
Through the pages of late author Neville Dawes's Caribbean modern classic, The Last Enchantment, Forbes waved a magic spell, captivating the intimate group of storybook lovers. "Leonie's performance reminds us of what a consummate professional actress she is," said Kwame Dawes, programme director of Calabash, and the author's son.
The likes of Winston 'Bello' Bell, Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of agriculture and fisheries, and Dawes's daughter, Adjoa, were the other readers of excerpts from the 50th-anniversary commemorative book, published originally in 1960.
"I wanted people to see the range of characters and themes and styles that Neville had in this book," said Kwame Dawes.
While Dr Tufton touched on the Anancy stories, "Just reading the book brought back memories of a culture that has evolved, but still possesses unique characteristics that one can identify with," said the agriculture minister, who admits that he is not big on literature.
But it was Leonie Forbes's selection that delved into a very interesting character, an English-Jamaican half-white, racist woman named Myrtle Hanson, who became a slave in the bedroom for a black Indian doctor, Reginald Kendal. In the story, Kendal left her for a much younger Mona Freeman.
"The goodly doctor had other generous affections, and to have discarded Mrs Hanson, 'a has been', for the dark-skinned, hot and young Mona Freeman, who she felt was not in the same class as her, must have been devastating for the middle-class woman," Forbes quipped later in an interview with The Gleaner.
Class and gender dynamics
However, Neville Dawes' book goes much deeper than speaking about the liaisons between men and women and the agility of the men who wantonly bedded women of the time. It would seem Neville Dawes was democratic about his take on class and gender dynamics in Jamaica.
With sharp wit, engaging storytelling, lyrical flourishes and an experimental narrative style, Neville Dawes first novel revealed his ambition and sophistication as a novelist.
Neville Dawes drew from four key issues in The Last Enchantment - of class and how class affects Jamaican culture and life; an awareness of history, encapsulating the memory of slavery, colonialism and the people who came; music and popular songs - it was here that Dawes showed the influence of jazz and its importance - and he looked at folk tradition and wisdom through the Anancy story, said Kwame Dawes.
The writer drew on the solid background of the society, and yes, there is a kind of respect for certain kinds of women. "We had our place and it (the examples in the book) was a good cross-section of the position we occupied," noted Leonie Forbes, who added that women were also seen as leaders of the society in this book.
Neville Dawes showed the compromises that women had made over the years, because of their affection to men in a patriarchal society.
It is also a political novel that looks unflinchingly at the realities of Jamaican politics at that time, said Kwame Dawes.
"When we see the issues and problems that we face today, we see in the novel the seed of those problems, and it helps us to understand why we are where we are now."
Born in Nigeria, in 1926, Neville Dawes, who grew up in rural Jamaica, died in 1984. His last job was director of the Institute of Jamaica. Today, his son speaks admiringly of a man who was very devoted to family, "Family came first". "His contribution to Jamaica is only now being recognised. He made the country pay more attention to the arts," Kwame Dawes concluded.