‘No Tricks, No Business’ comes to National Cultural Centre

Sep 28, 2008 News

-aims to hilariously highlight unethical practices in society

After delivering smashing performances at the Carifesta play ‘Legend of the Silk Cotton Tree’, writer/director Godfrey Naughton brings to the National Cultural Centre his masterpiece, called ‘No Tricks, No Business,’ which he raved will make patrons ‘laugh, think, then laugh even louder.’

While he noted that the play is not ‘matching any individual or group to any incident,’ he indicated that it, however, highlights several issues that revolve in our immediate society.

In an interview yesterday, Naughton, a scene producer and actor of over thirty years, related that the play comes at a time in Guyana when the search for good moral foundation for relationships between friends, family and business associates is as elusive as at no other time in our history.

He said that, in the play, a man’s business acumen, lots of times, is judged by his lack, or near lack, of scruples. It depicts an honest businessman being viewed as ‘out of time’, and a good nurse using her need for ambitious fulfillment to rationalize unethical behaviour, entering the body-touting racket at a hospital in the city.

The nurse feels that Guyana owes her a living, because she stayed to serve her country despite the chance to defect to England.

As explained by Naughton, it all comes with a terrible price, like everything else, a theme that runs through the play. The family she is doing it for is almost destroyed, leaving that sacred structure severely compromised.

She is only saved from her ‘comeuppance’ by the treasured friendship between an unlikely rich Indo-Guyanese and an Afro-Guyanese ‘street-smart’ man — both patients in her ward. Each will say and explain how they owe each other their lives.

Naughton said their story is an object lesson on how dire situations can transcend ethnicity, and he feels that good, clean Guyanese humour is the vehicle used to carry this weighty drama.

Each of the four main characters’ stories is skillfully linked to produce one poignant snapshot of life at present in Guyana, while each person represents a stratum of society.

These strata are represented by Sonia Yarde, Godfrey Naughton, Lyndon ‘jumbi’ Jones, Michael Ignatius, Wade Donald and Nicola Moonsammy.

According to Naughton, the play was supposed to be staged from June 27 to 29, but had to be postponed because of the fire which destroyed part of the National Cultural Centre.

He said he tried to stage the play yet again in August, but since Guyana was taken up with plans for Carifesta X, he again rescheduled the show to the present date.

Admission for the show is set at $1000 for seating in auditorium front, while auditorium tickets are set at $700. Tickets for balcony cost $300.

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