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"THE COURTYARD in and around which Errol John's "Moon on A Rainbow Shawl" takes place is like an echo chamber. It collects and magnifies all the sounds that float into this corner of Trinidad -- babies' wails, bird songs, thunder, the cries of the fish monger and the iceman and the steel-drum calypso music that is the islanders own lyrical art
form.
This 1957 play -- now receiving it's West Coast premiere at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre -- the welter of sound can seem expressive or oppressive, depending on who's doing the listening. For Ephram, a young trolley driver who lives in the courtyard in the years after the end of World War II, each noise is an annoyance, a distraction and a reminder of all the aspects of island life he blames for his troubles and longs to leave behind.
It's the productions sound design by Allen Lam, though that anchors "Moon on a Rainbow Shawl," physically and emotionally --- connecting it's charecters to the landscape, whether they cling to it or fight it's hold."
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