Playwright Jane Crichton launches newest musical
MONTEGO BAY, ST James — Playwright Jane Crichton last week launched her latest production White Witch, a musical play that depicts a little-known side to the tale of Annie Palmer, the notorious White Witch of Rose Hall Estate.
According to actor/playwright Douglas Prout, he, along with Crichton and David Tulloch tweaked the renowned Annie Palmer folklore “to give it not a dark story” but rather “a beautiful love story”.
“We tried very hard… and I would like to say we succeeded, to show the lighter side of the Annie Palmer saga. Show her in a softer, gentler light. We give an insight into the workings of her mind, why was she the way she was. We try to understand her a little better so we don’t try to present her as an evil ogre or wicked witch, as one of the songs is entitled,” Prout told Splash during a telephone interview yesterday. “We present this story as a musical, featuring brand-new original music — the angle that we are approaching to make it fresh and have currency. We have scored with this play.”
The gala world premiere for White Witch is scheduled for Saturday, February 6, 2010, at the Fairfield Theatre, Montego Bay.
The cast features lead actress Maylynne Walton, presently one of the hottest commodities on the Jamaican theatre landscape. It is completed by Keiran King, who last appeared in Dreamgirls; Philip Clarke, Peter Abrikian, Noelle Kerr, Karla Josephs, Coleen Lewis and the Fairfield Youth Troupe.
The White Witch, Annie Palmer, was born in Haiti. She is a character in Jamaican folklore.
According to legend, she was a beautiful but spoiled young white woman who arrived on the island as the wife of the owner of Rose Hall Plantation, east of Montego Bay in 1820. Palmer’s husband (and several husbands afterwards) died suspiciously. She became known as a mistress of voodoo, using it to terrorise her slaves and to take male slaves into her bed at night, all of whom she subsequently murdered.
She is also supposed to have dispatched her lovers allegedly because she was bored of them. Assuming this is true it would make Palmer an extreme example of a clinical psychopath although the stories are speculation at best. The legend has her murdered in her bed during the slave uprisings of the 1830s.
White Witch was launched at the Rosehall Great House last weekend.
