Photo: Costas Economides
Written when he was at the centre of the vanguard of a new generation of South African playwrights in the 1960s, this watershed work in Athol Fugard’s oeuvre, Hello and Goodbye, is not only one of his best plays, but a play that can rightfully take its place besides such powerful works as Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape or Pinter’s Homecoming. A script of such emotional complexity and philosophical substance, yet always simply and powerfully expressed, it cannot possibly be done justice in this small review space.
Hester (Dorothy ann Gould), hardened and cheapened by a life of prostitution, returns home after fifteen years. However, this prodigal is unrepentant and still defines herself by her hatred for her father, her origin and the Calvinist God. She has come to claim her inheritance, her father’s work accident compensation money, she believes remains hidden somewhere in the house. She finds her reclusive brother Johnnie (Michael Maxwell) has spent his life tending to their bedridden father. As she ransacks the family home, they unpack their personal histories, the world they were born into and try to come to terms with the potentially devastating consequences of recognizing themselves.
Ultimately it is a miraculously redemptive work, a signature trait that has always distinguished Fugard from his bleaker peers.
Mark Graham’s incisive direction allows us to glimpse the children still buried within Hester and Johnnie, and at one point, subtly, even Johnnie’s brief incestuous thought. Superlative performances make this one of the best productions of the year.
Share on Facebook
Hannes Brummer as Henry and Rantebeng Makapan as Sticks
Paul Slabolepszy’s Mooi Street Moves resuscitates his reputation for the younger generation as one of our major playwrights. Written a decade and a half ago, the play has stood the test of time and the issues it explores are very much alive. Some of the fizz has gone out of the comedy, edgy in its day, but the scenario he creates is as riveting as ever.
Set in 1992, Henry Stone (Hannes Brummer), a down and out, white, country bumpkin arrives in Hilbrow at 2am searching for his brother at his last known address. Instead, he finds in the flat Sticks Letsebe (Ranteberg Makapan), a happy-go-lucky, “middle man” and small-time huckster. Hilbrow is at the time imploding. Absentee landlords and banks red-lining property have left the area to Rachmanism and gangsters. Sticks offers Henry friendship, food, accommodation and a job. Slabolepszy masterfully dissects Henry’s culture of white entitlement, while at the same time capturing the plea of the bewildered honest man who simply wants to make a living.
Explosive performances from Brummer and Makapan (who is particularly versatile) make for enthralling theatre, but director Moira Blumenthal could introduce more gradation into their relentless delivery. There is sufficient opportunity in the script, despite Slabolepszy hallmark frenetic style, for holding the occasional poignant pause.
This revival is an opportunity to extol the virtues of the well written play, an art that appears to be disappearing as our young playwirhgts seem to have blunted their pencils with too much bad television. We have here scenes that can sustain themselves for 30 minute without blackouts; characters who don’t talk to the air or imaginary people; dialogue that keeps the audience guessing; words that srping with integrity from the characters; and the ability to encapsulate a complex reality without some author trying to ramrod us with their message. What a pleasure.
Share on Facebook
Photo: Guy de Lancey
Venom is a good comeback for young playwright Juliet Jenkin, who after her magnificent success with The Boy Who Fell from the Roof dipped somewhat with the rather dull Library. In Venom she returns to the scenario of unrequited physical intimacy between dominant, articulate girl and troubled boy, and to sketching eccentric characters that delight audiences with their quirky digressions about life.
This time Jenkin ventures into darker emotional waters. Gabriel (Nicholas Dallas) is a dysfunctional young man and borderline schizophrenic menaced by paranoid visions of a snake-like thing. His girl friend Zann (Jenkin) plays along, singing to calm him and nurture him through his psychosis (perhaps in the faith that R D Laing’s theory is correct and he’ll recuperate by himself). How life pushed Gabriel over the edge we realize early on is the revelation that will be manufactured for the climax of the play.
As an actor Dallas possesses exactly the right sensitivity to match his character’s vulnerability and he delivers a nuanced and very fine performance. As the author, Jenkin is perfectly at home in the role of Zann.
Despite its numerous strengths, its originality, Jenkin’s intelligent observations and off-beat humour, one is however left with an incomplete feeling, the kind of simultaneous relief and disappointment one experiences when after having lit all the candles and settled down, the electricity comes back on. The political commentary which is expressed as a sort of crude diagnosis is at the nub of the problem. Gabriel worries that he might be becoming a white supremacist. But what Jenkin doesn’t resolve convincingly yet wishes to convey is how her characters’ inner turmoil reflect the social undercurrents at large.
Share on Facebook
