Porgy & Bess (Artscape)

Pauline Malefane as Bess with Derrick Parker as Crown

Pauline Malefane as Bess with Derrick Parker as Crown


It cannot be overstated that Angelo Gobbato is an extraordinary man. Thanks to his prodigious efforts, the UCT Opera School has supplied Cape Town Opera with a steady stream of remarkable singers and voices. There are hardly any companies in the world, including the US that can muster productions with over 60 trained black opera singers. Porgy and Bess is a major achievement.

Certainly not as revolutionary as the 1955 American ‘Negro’ performance at the Palace of Culture in what was then Leningrad in the Soviet Union (and humorously recounted by Truman Capote in the New Yorker), Porgy and Bess will open shortly in Umeå, Sweden. Yet it’s early days for this ambitious venture. The die is well cast though – this production is leagues ahead of the feeble Showboat that toured overseas incredulously to great acclaim. Patronising African performers is not something one wishes to see perpetuated into the twenty-first century.

Cape Town audiences need not be disappointed that Otto Maidi due to illness has been replaced by Xolela Sixaba, who shares the role with American baritone Leonard Rowe, as Porgy. Only he doesn’t seem crippled in anyway other than that he gets about on a cart. Pauline Malefane, known for her title role in uCarmen eKhayelitsha, is well cast as Bess, especially since George and his lyricist brother Ira Gershwin had Carmen in mind while creating the role. Marcus Desando as the happy-dust peddler Sportin Life is delightfully camp, especially in “It ain’t necessarily so”, though in his seduction scene with Bess – “There’s a boat dat’s leavin” soon for New York” – his character fails to convince. Derrick Parker has the strapping physicality for the killer Crown, but his voice is unexpectedly slight. On opening night Michelle Saldanha as Serena drew applause for her “My man’s gone down” from an audience otherwise reticent in the first act. The second half sails far better overall. Chorus master Peter Valentovič has the ensemble excel in the spiritual choral arrangements and rouse with the jazzy rhythms.

Porgy is a dark, violent work. This is not a squeamish production – it’s even raunchy in “I ain’t got no shame” – however, in the current South African context, the drama could have benefited from a more brutally realistic and less operatic treatment.

Patrons should keep in mind that this is the opera version, not the jazz standards familiar to most lovers of songs like “Summertime” and “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin”. The demotic inflections in the recitative are particularly tricky. Although in English, the surtitles are essential, as the various unfamiliar accents are hard to follow, while occasionally shoddy diction is to blame and projection is shy. At times, they could be singing in Italian for all one can make out. The interpretation often smacks more of Verdi than Gershwin, but this will not detract in continental Europe.

The setting is ill defined and contradictory. On curtain rising, the costumes suggest a South African context, but this soon evaporates. Whatever the budget, it’s hard to come to terms with a tacky set that is extraordinary for its ugliness, and not helped by the dim, at best perfunctory lighting. The foam walls (supposedly masonry) wobble, even curl. For marring an otherwise capable production, the set should be scrapped outright.

September 23, 2006 | Comments Closed

Voorkamer Festival in Darling

Among no less than three performing arts festivals this week in Cape Town is the innovative Darling Voorkamer Fees. Visitors buy a ticket for a route which includes three stops in local homes where performances are staged. Who exactly is on the route is not known beforehand, but the carefully balanced program includes artists as diverse as Sowetan-born songwriter Neo Muyanga, Nicholas Ellenbogen’s Theatre for Africa and Pieter Tredoux singing French chanson.

The problem often mooted about performing arts festivals in South Africa is that they fail to engage with the broader community and consequently struggle for credibility. But the Voorkamer concept appears to hold some solutions, chiefly because it goes far beyond simply spreading the economic benefits around. Sure, the local community is involved in the planning of the festival, there are casual jobs, the taxis, the concomitant food and craft stalls and bed and breakfast accommodation, but vitally important is that this festival also engages with its community participants on a cultural level.

The punters experience unfamiliar places in safe conditions. They meet not only strangers from their own community, but from communities they are normally unlikely to enter. But this is far more than a township tour, it’s a tour of the town of Darling, and the hosts are themselves exposed to what are for many untried experiences – cabaret, mime, classical music, puppets, modern dance – all performed by professionals right there in their living rooms. It also goes further than other arts’ ‘outreach’ programmes, as the residents have more control, introducing the shows and welcoming the audience, even sharing their accommodation with the artists.

The artists work hard – performing their thirty minute pieces twelve times over the three days to audiences not always familiar with the nature of their craft. It’s the honesty and freshness of the response they get, together with the intimacy – the average audience size is 20 (sometimes leading patrons to interject and converse with the performer during the show!) – which seems to invigorate the performers, and in some cases has turned out to be a life-changing experience.

Many artists also do workshops at the three local schools the week before the festival. These include activities such as making puppets, writing a script – then filming and editing it, and producing a daily newspaper. Last year remarkable results were achieved surpassing all expectations with a documentary made by a fifteen old girl on drug abuse and another on gang warfare. Dutch film-maker Mark Timmer gave the children digital video cameras and sent them into the field with sensational results. While Dutch theatre director Tom de Ket produced a soap opera written and performed by the local kids, who clearly demonstrated keen insights into – and even satirised – the television formats of the weather report, the business stats and the news.

Visitors do not know beforehand who they will get to see. They purchase a route ticket, taking them to three shows, carefully balanced and chosen by the producers. This encourages people to experiment. Not all the artists are announced and a few mystery guests turn up pleasant surprises. Unlike the usual solitary interval experience of the formal theatre, here audience members and complete strangers find it easy to chat among themselves between shows in the minicab taxis, sharing their perceptions and enjoying a cultural debate.

Naturally, the choice of work is restricted to what can be performed in a makeshift theatre. Stripped of complicated sets, sound and light effects – pure dramatic styles are encouraged. It’s not possible to stage a classical ballet or a full opera, but the Voorkamer Festival is doing something quite different. It’s high in concept, and as such easily replicated and versatile.

“I hope that festivals like this spring up all over the country,” says producer Inge Bos.
“It’s not idealistic or simplistic to say that this kind of festival bridges divides in society, enrich communities, and allows even the inhabitants of a small rural South African town, to enjoy and have a stake in world culture,” adds producer Wim Visser.

September 6, 2006 | Comments Closed