The best way to see Graham Weir’s latest musical performance is to sit with your eyes closed. There is brilliance and precision in his vocals these days. But listen carefully and another quality starts to emerge. There was always a gnostic element to Weir’s work, yet this time around the ballads selected for Songs of Hangings and Redemptions brings his spiritual nature particularly to the fore.
Although the lyrics touch upon justice and outrage, dwell on the defiance of the guilty and the resignation of the innocent, their sentiment is primarily informed by the mental clarity the proximity of death brings. One would expect a show about rough justice and mob lynching, about foolhardiness as often as it is about betrayal and vindictiveness, to be dark and harrowing, but Weir rewardingly treats the material with empathy, humanity and unexpected gentleness.
This redemptive element is reinforced by versatile musos Pitchie Rommellaere and Simon Ratcliffe who accompany Weir’s singing and percussion with soulful musical arrangements.
Weir spent much time in the Cape Town and Wynberg public libraries sourcing sheet music and listening to old vinyl records. Led Zeppelin once did Gallows Pole, and Amazing Grace and Tom Dooley are well known, but many of the songs will be unfamiliar to most. Some songs stretch back as far as the fifteen hundreds, and range in origin from the Scottish Mc Pherson’s Farewell to the American spiritual Canaan Land. Weir’s quirky, mischievous humour – which is never far away – is present in the words he has set to The Devil Didn’t Die Today.
Interspersed with the songs are brief monologues, topped and tailed by Weir’s original text about a set of new gallows going up in his narrator’s town, and extracts from William Faulkner’s Light In August and John Steinbeck’s The Vigilante. Director Megan Chortiz has ensured that the links to the songs are cohesive and natural.
As further encouragement to go, a particularly good menu accompanies the show. Although Weir is conscientiously vegetarian, the Kalk Bay kitchen’s seared tuna and roast fillet are a substantial incentive.
