The downfall of Karl Hart’s fourth play is that the odds aren’t long enough.  In Backstage, a fictional cast and crew take a show from script to stage.  We see a reading of the script, a number of rehearsals, some dressing-room undressing, and segments of the inscribed show, Just Soups.  But we never get a sense that the show is truly endangered.  It’s not that Mr Hart doesn’t provide obstacles, but that the obstacles are too easily overcome.  The characters worry, but we never do.  The whole thing trundles implacably towards opening night.  Given the many obstacles Mr Hart must have overcome to get Backstage on the stage, this is a minor tragedy in and of itself.

Backstage combines two potent tropes.  The first is the let’s-put-on-a-show plot device, which usually lends a natural momentum to the story, as time ticks away.  (Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney launched careers on these stories.)  The second, related trope is the use of a play-within-a-play, which allows for self-reflexivity.  (Hamlet recreates his father’s murder in a play to enrage his uncle, and Michael Frayn’s hilarious 1982 play Noises Off features three failed performances of its farce-within-a-farce.)

Backstage squanders the potential of both techniques.  One of the better scenes has the actors adjusting their performances according to the director’s shouted instructions.  A funny idea, but Mr Hart only finds a handful of punchlines, leaving dozens more to waste.  And throughout, we are left to guess, infer or remember how much time remains, when an overt indicator (a calendar? repetition?) would hint at impending disaster.

The real actors, left without guidance by their real director Nicole Williams (in her debut), do what actors do when left to themselves—anything they want.  Thus Brian Johnson reprises his over-enunciated anger from Glass Routes; Gracia Thompson reprises her affectations from Smile Orange; Peter Heslop reprises Peter Heslop from any of his last several roles; and Nyanda Cammock watches them while looking good.  This is mostly Ms Williams’ fault, not theirs.  In fact, all four are so naturally likable on the stage the result is still watchable.  Thompson is dignified, Cammock and Johnson have chemistry and Heslop’s face is a comic study.

So instead of the “double serving of exceptional theatre” promised in the programme, Backstage feels half as fascinating as it could have been, with missed opportunities in the script, direction and characterizations.  But there is yet a bit of drama to unfold.  Having thrown his work into onerous circumstances, and been forced to make difficult decisions (one performance was already cancelled), Mr Hart now has to watch Backstage fight to survive.

Ras Genie has its laughs, including a clergyman (Rowan Byfield, treading worn ground) whose liturgical literature draws from scriptures old and new—i.e., the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and Beenie Man. It has a deliciously absurd idea at its core, swirling two Abrahamic faiths together for its title character, a Rastafarian jinni. And the cast tackles the material with gusto—Carlene Taylor, as exotic dancer Wingie, and Peter Heslop, as the eponymous Ras Genie, both deliver spirited performances.

But comic absurdity and attitude cannot paper over structural flaws. Ras Genie is unsure of its protagonist. More time is spent with Wingie and her desire to find love, financial security, or a way out of the ghetto. The title, curtain call and expositional passages, however, favour her protector, the Genie, who swings improbably between wanting to return to his bottle and itching to be free.

Traditional Greek theatre sometimes climaxed with a deus ex machina—a god who appeared, a little too conveniently, to solve unsolvable problems and untangle tangled plots. Modern audiences, paying for their entertainment, frown on such arbitrary endings. Ras Genie’s second act contains what we could call a jinni ex machina, who appears without explanation and whisks Ras Genie away. It makes you want to supply the stage with an extra bottle or two.

It’s a shame, because Andrew Roach sprinkles Ras Genie with the kind of cultural commentary emblematic of ‘roots’ plays and essential to keeping society healthy and its leaders honest. Believing he can’t return to his glass house, the Genie laments on his bad luck—he’s stuck in Jamaica, of all places, with “Bruce (Golding) and Portia (Simpson-Miller) and the sliding dollar.”  Some of the characters aspire to the perceived acme of Cherry Gardens and Norbrook. And there’s the aforementioned Reverend, quoting Colossians and Capleton.

Roach also has a keen ear for the vernacular of his countrymen, and an affinity for the plight of the common man (and woman), traits shared with luminaries like Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. Wilde and Shaw, however, never left their characters without arcs and their plots without through-lines.

Given its flaws, Ras Genie feeds the idea, popular amongst the cocktail crowd (you know, the ones who live in Cherry Gardens and Norbrook), that ‘roots’ plays are a low form of entertainment. It’s hard to disagree that our marketplace is stuffed with the genre—turn to today’s Entertainment pages—or that many are mediocre. But what this country needs is more ‘roots’ plays, not less. To hell with Oscar Wilde. We need to be drowning in indigenous drama, our lives relived for us with imagination and intermission. William Shakespeare was little more than a talented hack banging out commissioned plays for the English masses, and he turned out alright.

Ras Genie lacks the makings of great art, but not because of its roots or its aspirations. Director Dahlia Harris, playwright Andrew Roach and their cohort of thespians just need to try again, keeping in mind always the importance of being earnest.