People are ready for a change in their calypso consumption, which was signalled by the 75 per cent occupancy at Kaiso House’s opening night on Friday.

This year, the calypso tent introduced elements of theatre, increasing the entertainment value and transforming the Queen’s Park Savannah space into The BarrackHARD, an interpretation of the barrack yard, the birthplace of calypso.

The opening act was a full production of dancers dressed in white who eventually mingled throughout the crowd. They were backed up by babydoll, jamette and bois man characters, spokespeople for the BarrackHard.

[caption id="attachment_998192" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A pierrot grenade gets close to the audience during his performance at the opening of Kaiso House in Port of Spain on Friday. - Roger Jacob[/caption]

During the first half of the show, these local characters interacted with the audience after every few songs. The babydoll walked around with her child, spouting lyrics from the Mighty Shadow’s song, Yuh Looking for Horn, and telling the audience she was looking for a “chile fadda.” She even told one patron the child looked like him and suggested he mind the child.

The jamette noted that a lot of fetes had sections and ticket prices had “a comma” in them. She said for that amount of money she wanted a week’s worth of food, a Netflix subscription, and other perks. She said she preferred a cheap cooler fete, to visit a calypso tent, or even to fete at home under the sheets.

It was all very engaging and the audience seemed to appreciate the interactions which broke up the hours and let them pass more quickly. Also adding an enjoyable element were the dancers who backed up some of the singers, as well as the MC Tyker Phillip, who was in character as madam jamette.

Of course, there were some teething problems like microphones disconnecting and time constraints, but that was mitigated by the quality of the calypsoes and the performers themselves.

Ruth “Sister Ava” Shallow opened the show on a high note performing Bring Down the Power, even as she told the audience she was hurting from the loss of her friends, rapso artists Mark Nottingham and Brother Resistance. She “put them to rest” as drums swelled and dancers swirled around her.

Unsurprisingly, the first encore of the night came for a song full of double entendre. The crowd clapped and laughed as Knolly “Brown Boy” Brown sang Josephine’s Problem, about a woman who was concerned about her cat dying from covid19.

He sang, “Covid kill she dog. Covid kill she hog, covid kill she duck, covid kill she creole cock... She put a mask on she pussy cat.”

In D Ting Fix, former calypso monarch Duane O'Connor disguised the idea of corruption with “goat mouth,” and spoke about Argentina winning the World Cup, “Gary” applying for the position of commissioner of police for fun, and arms of the protective services accepting a four per cent wage increase.

Ann Marie “Twiggy” Parks performed Jam Down the Road, a duet with the late Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste. However,