Folklore, love and the supernatural collide in ‘A Deal With Darkness’

Rishi Ra­goonath

Two love sto­ries, one stage—A Deal With Dark­ness lit up the Na­pari­ma Bowl from April 17 to 19, hold­ing au­di­ences spell­bound as per­form­ers brought lo­cal folk­lore vivid­ly to life in a haunt­ing and emo­tion­al­ly charged nar­ra­tive of love, sac­ri­fice and con­se­quence.

Writ­ten and di­rect­ed by Paul Bansee­lal, the pro­duc­tion trans­formed the au­di­to­ri­um in­to the rur­al vil­lage of Tor­tu­ga in 1919. From set de­sign to cos­tumes, the stag­ing cre­at­ed an im­mer­sive at­mos­phere as the cast sang and danced their way through a world pop­u­lat­ed by spir­its, ghosts and jumbies—in­clud­ing La Di­a­b­lesse and the Soucouyant—who roamed the night, ter­ror­is­ing vil­lagers and forc­ing them in­doors at sun­set.

The mu­si­cal stage play drew heav­i­ly on Trinidad and To­ba­go’s folk­lore and oral tra­di­tions, weav­ing su­per­nat­ur­al el­e­ments in­to a hu­man sto­ry an­chored in moral con­flict and de­sire. As the nar­ra­tive un­fold­ed, the vil­lage of Tor­tu­ga—once peace­ful—de­scend­ed in­to chaos af­ter a des­per­ate res­i­dent struck a bar­gain with the Dev­il in ex­change for a pot of wealth ris­ing from the earth. The deal un­leash­es a se­ries of trag­ic events marked by sick­ness, death and fear.

At the cen­tre of the sto­ry is Celia, La Di­a­b­lesse, por­trayed by An­na­ma­ri­na Mo­han. Liv­ing in the for­est be­neath a silk cot­ton tree, Celia un­der­goes a trans­for­ma­tion af­ter falling in love with Christo­pher, the es­tate own­er’s son, played by Bashirud­din Ho­sein. Love be­comes her turn­ing point, draw­ing her away from her dark­er na­ture.

A sec­ond nar­ra­tive thread fol­lows the well-known folk­lore of Maria, the High­way Ghost, who was killed af­ter be­ing bit­ten by a ser­pent and now roams the road in search of her lost love, Ar­joon. Their re­la­tion­ship, de­stroyed by prej­u­dice and cru­el­ty, adds an­oth­er lay­er to the play’s ex­plo­ration of long­ing and loss.

To­geth­er, the in­ter­twined sto­ries re­in­force the pro­duc­tion’s cen­tral mes­sage: that good ul­ti­mate­ly tri­umphs over evil. Celia, Maria, and Mor­gan, the vil­lage obeah man, con­front the Dev­il, his fear­some La­ga­hoo, and Shan­ty the ser­pent woman, in a cli­mac­tic bat­tle that sees bro­ken con­tracts with dark­ness re­stored and trapped souls fi­nal­ly set free.

De­scrib­ing the pro­duc­tion, Bansee­lal said, “Set in the vil­lage of Tor­tu­ga, Trinidad, in 1919, A Deal with Dark­ness is a mu­si­cal stage play root­ed in the folk­lore and oral tra­di­tions of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The play ex­plores themes of love, sac­ri­fice, moral­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al con­se­quence, cul­mi­nat­ing in a fi­nal bat­tle be­tween good and evil.”