Theatre review: Meetings

Trinidadian couple Jean and Hugh are living the 1980s dream: Chain-smoking Jean (Martina Laird) has never wanted to be a domestic goddess, instead becoming a successful businesswoman who's just taken on a contract marketing a new American cigarette brand to the island's poor villagers. Hugh (Kevin N Golding) has a plumbing supplies company, and has struck a deal to sell pipes at inflated prices to a government crony. Yes, there might have been the odd topical connection that helped put Mustapha Matura's Meetings on the list of potential revivals for this year's JMK Award. But while Jean doesn't seem to want anything to change, Hugh is on the verge of a midlife crisis prompted by food: With no time or inclination to cook or eat together, the couple have largely depended on restaurants and takeaways.

But when an old woman from the countryside sets up a fruit stall near Hugh's office, he tries a mango which transports him back to his childhood. Suddenly burgers and macaroni cheese won't do, and he wants to go back to the traditional Trinidadian food he remembers.

He starts to treat the fruit-seller as a mentor, even bringing her to business meetings (where she persuades him to take a cut on the taxpayers' money he's getting for the pipes,) and eventually he hires her granddaughter Elsa (Bethan Mary-James) as a live-in cook. But while Hugh finds the food connects him to a part of his heritage he'd neglected or never known, Jean has little appetite and is developing Period Drama Cough.

One of the most satisfying things about Meetings is that Matura doesn't take the setup of a young woman entering a house with a middle-aged man in it and go in the obvious direction - if anything her unseen grandmother is viewed with more suspicion by his wife, and if Jean has a problem with Elsa she's happy to let it go, at least until she comes to symbolise things about herself she'd rather not be reminded of. If there's a clash between the couple it's in their attitudes to what makes success and happiness: Hugh starts to reject the idea that money and possessions are the end goal, which Jean sees as a sign of immaturity - she views his new diet as unhealthy nursery food, all the while subsisting entirely on takeaway fried chicken and chips (which she gets delivered straight to the pool.)

After acting and writing for the Orange Tree, Kalungi Ssebandeke completes a trifecta at the theatre by winning the directing award, and while I don't know if this is a show that's particularly showing off a distinctive directing style (there's some moments of flair from Olivia Jamieson's set, Ali Hunter's lighting and Jose Puello's sound when Hugh talks about reconnecting with the Shango religion) it does show a steady and confident hand.

Of course there's also a solid cast helping no end with that, and while they're all good it's Laird who gets the plum role: While the more financially fortunate residents of Trinidad may have sold themselves on being a flourishing part of the new world and the island's history as something to be left behind, there's stark reminders that to many in the wider world its people are still there to be exploited, and Jean has to confront her own part in that. The issues in Meetings are wider than the kitchen we see, but Matura has also given us characters who make the more intimate human drama worth caring about as well.

Meetings by Mustapha Matura is booking until the 11th of November at the Orange Tree Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.