Interview with Athol Fugard published in IATC Journal

Athol Fugard

April 27, 2010 | Tags: | Comments Closed

Tainted Love (At Beefcakes) Sunday nights


Christine Weir and Godfrey Johnson’s Tainted Love is the perfect cabaret show for this tiny, new basement venue on the fringe of Green Point’s alternative ghetto; it feels like an underground club in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.

With songs such as Masochism Tango (Tom Lehrer), Hanky Panky (Stephen Sondheim), Tainted Love (Marc Almond) and Fuck you very much (Lilly Allen), they explore love in its kinkier dimensions, from playful sadomasochism (Have you waxed your crack? by Johnson and Weir) to Sapphic love (I Kissed a Girl by Katie Perry). It’s on the light and funny side, and you’d have to be quite a prude to be offended.

Choreographer Fiona du Plooy, who made an impression in the camp country and western cabaret Angels on Horseback last year, directs. The fingerprints of that show are evident here.

Johnson and Weir make a superb double act. They are top-drawer performers, with Weir’s exceptional vocal talents and Johnson’s (who sings too) musical versatility. On stage, they have natural comic reciprocity, their witty repartee carried with aplomb into the cheeky and sometimes tricky choreography.

One hopes this will be the start of wonderful duo and great things to come.

April 23, 2010 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed

Afrikaaps (Baxter) Until April 23

Photo: Aryan Kaganof


The master narrative would have us believe that Afrikaans is the evolutionary linguistic product of the Dutch settlers. Certainly, the academic understanding of Afrikaans, the official language taught not only in South Africa but abroad, is the codified (some will also argue nationalist) project of the white Afrikaner. In so doing, a wedge was driven between the language and the identity of the majority of its speakers. There were school boycotts in the 1970s against Afrikaans as “the language of the oppressor”. In certain circles, Afrikaans is still believed to be under threat thanks to that stain.

As David Kramer and Taliep Petersen’s musical Ghoema some years ago set out to reclaim a Cape musical heritage largely written out of authorized history during apartheid, Afrikaaps is a new theatrical edutainment fighting for the recognition of how Afrikaans developed as a Dutch creolized language amongst coloured speakers outside of this white hegemony.

The first written Afrikaans was as phonetic Arabic script translations of the Qur’an over 200 years ago. The Bible was only translated into today’s official Afrikaans in 1933.

The extremely talented young cast under the direction of Catherine Henegan seeking to set the record straight are hip-hop poet Jitsvinger, singer, actor and dancer Moenier Adams, singer and poet Blaq Pearl, hip-hop artist and activist Emile Jansen, rapper and break-dancer Bliksemstraal, accompanied by composer, pianist and jazz prodigy Kyle Shepherd and musician Shane Cooper. They make a superb ensemble.

Employing music, poetry, dance, skits, documentary and interview video footage, they get their message across in a clear and humorous way. Henegan has dressed the show well, but the shape is problematic, without a coherent trajectory. Ironically, although dealing with ‘gam taal’ and street talk, it feels oddly cerebral and emotionally disinvested. Perhaps, it’s because the very good-looking cast are all male, except for Pearl. One of the principle cast members having to drop out at the last moment didn’t help.

But without a doubt this show is full of rewards and should be seen. So: “Aweh my bru! Koppel die lyne” (Hey! Spread the word).

April 19, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Closed

The Train Driver (Fugard Theatre) Until April 18

Photo: Ruphin Coudyzer

Athol Fugard’s latest play, The Train Driver, which had its world première here, is his most intriguing since the advent of democracy. It is not as resolved a work as Exits and Entrances; it suffers the same monologue-heavy, undramatic radio play quality of Booitjie and the Oubaas, but it is braver, less contrived, far more on target than either Victory or Coming Home. It is also ingenious.

Roelf Visagie (Sean Taylor) is a train driver with post-traumatic stress disorder after a black woman with her baby strapped to her back committed suicide by placing herself under his engine. The true story on which this is based is even more horrific. The suicide (Pumla Lolwana) took two more children with her, one of whom she pulled back on to the tracks when the child tried to escape. Perhaps this created too many moral ambiguities for Fugard, but Roelf (and Fugard) is strangely neglectful on the dimension the death of the infant should bring; his beef is with the mother. Tracking down her body to confront her ghost leads Roelf to a Godforsaken graveyard outside Motherwell, where Simon Hanabe (Owen Sejake) buries the unclaimed corpses of the nameless. Packs of feral dogs and equally ferocious gangs of dehumanised young men prowl the area.

The characterisation of Simon is rudimentary and uncomfortable; he is the familiar, epigrammatic rustic with a common sense that is at once comical and full of wisdom. His dynamic with Roelf often feels antediluvian, but Sejake has a gigantic stage presence and is utterly compelling.

For his part, Taylor is hammy, and when Roelf mentally breaks down early on, Taylor elicits laughs. Very oddly, Roelf keeps bursting into Afrikaans and then translating in English; it rings false, destroying our suspension of disbelief. Taylor these days seems to have a hard enough time just doing a South African accent. The play would be stronger in Afrikaans, with Roelf speaking in his mother tongue.

But the ingenuity of The Train Driver lies in that collision between the unstoppable subject and its immovable object. What Fugard has uniquely articulated for us at last, like no other playwright, is the dilemma of white guilt and its existential anguish; the counterintuitive truth that we are responsible for the destruction we cause but over which we have no control.

April 10, 2010 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed

Klein Karoo Nasionalse Kunstefees 2010

The Famished Road on at the KKNK 2010


The KKNK starts in Oudsthoorn this weekend, and adopts some of the most substantial innovations since its inception in 1995. A day pass will give access to a range of musical acts, stalls and fleamarkets on the western bank of the Grobbelaarsrivier. It is hoped this will solve pedestrian congestion outside the venues in the main street area. The idea is to divide the town into a number of neighbourhoods (a ‘Museum’ area with restaurants, a Theatre district), each with a distinct character.

This year, some 35 productions will premiere at the festival, including several site-specific works.

Among the works the festival highlights are: Marita van der Vyver’s Vergenoeg adapted as a musical, staring Sandra Prinsloo, Milan Murray and Alexa Strachan; Yasmina Reza latest play, God of Carnage, translated into Afrikaans and directed by Hennie van Greunen; Betésda staged at the municipal swimming-pool with Nicola Hanekom, Nicole Holm, Bronwyn van Graan, Grant Swanby, Eben Genis and Neels van Jaarsveld; the drag queen duo Mince will for the first time be at the festival with Mincing in die Klein Karoo; Die proponentjie celebrates playwright Pieter Fourie’s 70th birthday; a brand new open-air amphitheatre on the Jamstreet farm will open with Chris Barnard’s Taraboemdery; Arthur Miller’s Dood van ‘n verkoopsman in a new translation directed by Bobby Heaney; Gary Gordon’s First Physical Theatre Company have created So loop ‘n volstruis. More than half of the theatre shows on the programme are comic dramas, farce or stand-up comedy.

It would appear that festival CEO, Brett Pyper, who took over the reins a couple of years ago, and his team are successfully reinvigorating the festival on several fronts.

April 1, 2010 | Comments Closed