See Barbados in a day? You must be joking! But that’s just what many cruise ship visitors have to do. In fact, they have less than a day to see the island’s most important sights. That deadline was a bit too tight for me, so when I recently guest posted on the Travel – Moments in Time blog, I gave myself 24 hours to enjoy the best of Barbados. Here are my recommendations for a one-day tour of Barbados – what are yours?
(Photo: Timothy Valentine)
Shelagh Stephenson’s ‘The Memory of Water’
Sometimes you just want to go to the theatre to sit back and be entertained. You don’t always need your brain fully functioning just taking on the variously complicated details. The Memory of Water is a wonderful example of a play that mixes both laughter and sadness with outstanding splendour.
Sheila Stephenson’s play is already recognized the world over for high-quality dialogue as has played in the world’s biggest cities for a number of years. Upon reaching the Frank Collymore Hall in Barbados, the Gale Theatre (a joint collaboration between London and Barbados) sees actors from both sides of the ‘pond’ mix well and keep us elated time and time again.
Producer Melissa Simmonds handed over the reins for Thom Cross to direct the 2010 version which brought particularly fine performances from Eddy McKay and Suzan Sylvester along with the brilliant third sister Nailah, Cumberbatch. Drew McKenzie’s character purposely started slow to build up to a great force to be reckoned with.
The play deals with three sisters meeting after the death of their mother. The sisters have a lot in common, yet appear strangely distant. One sister is visited a number of times by their mother which adds to the atmosphere in the theatre. Certainly, while the first half of the play brought raucous laughing consistently, the second half the play is in some ways full of extremely moving moments with many members of the audience shedding a tear because it brought back memories of those they’ve lost themselves.
The dialogue and content of the play did slip into the ‘adult’ range occasionally leading the elderly couple next to me finding somewhere else to go for the second half of the play. Nevertheless the use of adult language was exactly in place as you would’ve expected in such highly strained circumstances.
I enjoyed the quality of the writing so much that I’ll go online with my dear bookshop at Amazon to see if they can send me the full script by return of post.
The small island of Barbados which produced Gary Sobers, Rihanna, Ryan Brathwaite and Shontelle to the world stage, now has another potential big name to look up to: Ramon Harewood. At six foot seven inches tall and 353 pounds in weight, he’s certainly a big person, but for his chosen profession, it’s proving rather useful.
Ramon, since stepping on to the field just four years ago, is moving upwards in the American Football game. He’s been picked for the Baltimore Ravens for the 2010 NFL draft. He’d played volleyball, cricket, rugby and (world) football in Barbados, representing his country in Rugby and athletics, but knew nothing of the game recognized as American football.
The former Queen’s College, (born St Michael) man is studying Applied Physics & Engineering at Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia. He was previously at the University of the West Indies and achieved an academic scholarship to Atlanta, not via a sports route. His he always insisted that his academic studies should be completed; we’ll have to see if this is possible this year with his new team matches.
Where you watch action of this man playing his new game, he appears well suited, often taking the approach of being a ‘brick wall’ that opposing players can’t get around/over. Search on goggle for some samples of his play and watch a star of the very near future, in action.
