EYE TO EYE PART 4 - Dennis Hall - Banyan

Sprang converses with Christopher Laird on his life and his history.
Director - Ricky Latiff
Niala Maharaj
1 October 2020
SPRANGALANG’S SECRET
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Dennis Hall and I both worked on a TV show called Gayelle in the 1980s, but he never spoke to me. I suspected that he disapproved of me: the little namby-pamby, prim-and-proper Indian girl in the midst of all the rough and ready Gayelle scenes.
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Our show had launched him onto the national stage. He was brought in to do a regular feature, named it ‘Cultural Sprangalang’, and the rest is legend. The man was a comic genius. He saw and perceived things in a completely original way. We often had to stop a Gayelle shoot because the cameraman was laughing so hard he couldn’t keep the camera straight. Funny things poured out of Dennis’ mouth in a constant stream, like water out of a natural spring.
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Dennis' very life has been a challenge to conventional wisdom. He seems to completely inhabit the quasi-vagrant, slippers-dragging, towel-shouldered Sprangalang persona he invented. But he comes from an educated middle-class family: his father was vice-principal of Naparima College, its Classics master, teaching Latin and Greek. And Dennis himself draws on a rare store of knowledge he carefully garners. You can’t predict which direction his mind will take at any given moment.
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His kind of comedy must come from seeing through bullshit like you have x-ray eyes. I felt Sprang didn’t talk to me because he saw through my bullshit, whatever it was. I was doing my best not to have bullshit, but everybody has bullshit somewhere. I grew to fear him.
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But bullshit comes at you from directions you least expect. An event eventually occurred that placed me in an invidious position and a Gayelle planning meeting turned ugly. This was a unique occurrence. Our meetings usually ranged from pleasant to rolling-on-the-floor hilarious. I was completely stunned when I found myself under ferocious attack. Should I jump or wait to be pushed?
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Suddenly, there was uproar in one part of the room. Sprangalang rose to his full height and bulk. ‘What you doing, Gyul?’ he barked at me. ‘Don’t let them get away with this! Bawl in they ears!’
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I had frozen like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
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‘Bawl in they ears!’ Sprang kept bellowing at me. ‘Don’t let people get away with stupidness. Bawl in they ears!’
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When I didn’t respond, he grew furious.
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‘Nobody ent doing she nothing, eh!’ he thundered. ‘That is my horse! Nobody going to attack her!’
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He said it over and over. ‘That is my horse!’
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And the incident boiled down like bhaji.
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Sprangalang returned to his role of comic and resumed not speaking to me. I concluded that he was just shy of women. But when water was more than flour, his home training asserted itself. Inside the vagrant persona was a knight in shining armour ready to save ‘his horse’ in distress.

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Thank you Denis Hall for all that you have done for Trini culture.