Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian

The pro­duc­tion de­lays that plagued the pre­lim­i­nary round of the Car­ni­val King and Queen com­pe­ti­tion last week were elim­i­nat­ed in the sec­ond stage of the com­pe­ti­tion on Wednes­day night. 

Al­though there was a slight­ly late start of the semi­fi­nals and the fi­nal of the Ju­nior Car­ni­val King and Queen com­pe­ti­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, it was not enough to de­rail the pro­duc­tion. 

With­in three hours of the in­di­vid­ual mas­quer­aders be­ing al­lowed to start to cross the stage, 30 Ju­nior Kings and Queens, and 20 Se­nior Queens com­plet­ed their per­for­mances. 

Those fa­mil­iar with the com­pe­ti­tions were pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to see them end be­fore mid­night in­stead of the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing. 

While the re­sults of the se­nior com­pe­ti­tion were an­nounced as pa­trons were slow­ly mak­ing their way out, the of­fi­cial re­sults were not dis­trib­uted up to 7 pm, yes­ter­day. 

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Kyle Pil­grim said he had notes of the re­sults that were an­nounced but de­clined to re­lease them to the me­dia for pub­li­ca­tion un­til he re­ceived of­fi­cial tab­u­la­tion from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (NC­BA), which man­ages the com­pe­ti­tion. 

The event on Wednes­day on­ly man­aged to at­tract a mod­est au­di­ence with large swaths of seats in the Grand Stand re­main­ing va­cant. 

How­ev­er, those present were treat­ed to mas­ter­ful and the­atri­cal pre­sen­ta­tions from mas­quer­aders hail­ing from across the coun­try and from a wide range of age groups. 

One of the high­lights of the se­nior com­pe­ti­tion was the re­turn of record nine-time Car­ni­val King Cur­tis Eu­stace from a brief hia­tus. 

Eu­stace’s eerie pre­sen­ta­tion Spir­it of “D” Gaspree Cave be­gan with a ghoul­ish nar­ra­tion backed with an elec­tron­ic dance mu­sic (EDM) beat which tran­si­tioned in­to Prob­lem Child’s Car­ni­val Jumbie. 

Eu­stace, whose cos­tume was among the largest in the com­pe­ti­tion, earned the loud­est ap­plause from the au­di­ence as he high­light­ed his trade­mark dance moves in front of the judges. 

Not to be out­done, his broth­er Ted, who is vy­ing for his sixth ti­tle, al­so im­pressed the au­di­ence with his cos­tume Jour­ney To Ma­yaro, which oc­cu­pied al­most the en­tire width of the stage. The cos­tume fea­tured a gi­gan­tic stand­ing cow sur­round­ed by mon­keys swing­ing from co­conut trees and a pair of macaws with mov­ing wings. 

Like his old­er broth­er, the younger Eu­stace’s cos­tume, which was al­so de­signed by their broth­er Mar­cus, utilised hy­draulics and py­rotech­nics to ac­cen­tu­ate the al­ready im­pres­sive de­signs. 

In the Car­ni­val Queen com­pe­ti­tion, Rox­anne Oma­lo, who se­cured her sec­ond ti­tle last year, sought to de­fend it with an ocean-themed pre­sen­ta­tion. 

Reign­ing Car­ni­val King Joseph Lewis al­so im­pressed with his ser­pent-themed Oberon-King of Fairy­land and the Pro­tec­tor of the Fairies. 

The top ten Car­ni­val Kings and Queens se­lect­ed by the judges on the night will move on to the fi­nal of the com­pe­ti­tion at the Di­manche Gras show at the venue on Sun­day night.