To slay the gorgon Medusa, the Greek hero Perseus observed the monster’s reflection in his shield. Looking at “the beast” (as Archbishop Tutu described our past during the Truth Reconciliation Commission) directly would turn one to stone. Similarly, in Truth in Translation, director Michael Lessac has astutely chosen the perspective of the interpreters for the TRC as his principle protagonists to deconstruct our nation’s response to those gruesome and gruelling public hearings.
This provides a cunning dramatic conceit; the translators become actors, speaking words not authored by themselves. “Traduttore, traditore” say the Italians, meaning ‘translator, traitor’. In the opening lines, the audience is challenged and the interpreters instructed not to feel and not to become emotionally overwhelmed by the testimony we will hear.
Lessac perhaps errs on the side of caution. Possibly the best indigenous debate theatre I’ve seen, it succeeds as a realistic recounting of how a wide range of individual South Africans struggle to come to grips with the atrocities committed under apartheid. The dialogue is pithy and provocative, but far too many narratives, the repetitive bathos of crass humour – that of the journalist’s barroom, manufactured scuffles and some faux rôle playing that defies our suspension of disbelief, has a strangely dulling effect. Sometimes it feels like a show designed by committee as opposed to the achievement of the collective.
The stellar cast, led by Andrew Buckland, Fana Mokoena, Jeroen Kranenburg and Nick Boraine, are across the board estimable.
Hugh Masekela’s evocative compositions often work against the material having the undesired effect of entertaining musical interludes rather than deepening our compassion. It is in the solo numbers, notably Thembi Mtshali-Jones’s heart-rending song asking for the bones of the dead, that Masekela heightens the visceral impact.
Setting testimony to music as lyrics produces appalling results. When recounting how a woman is necklaced, the chorus soars: “She’s on fire! [fie-yah!]” Contrast this with Philip Miller’s chilling use of TRC recordings and the astonishing artistic resolution he eventually found for his cantata REwind, and you’ll understand the difference.
It’s incalculably rewarding to see a play not afraid of controversy. A blistering broadside is launched against FW de Klerk. We must hope this will encourage other writers to be as vocal.
It is vital that our theatre makers confront the horrors of the recent past and that producers do not shrink from the obvious commercial negatives of mounting such disturbing work. The subject matter is of such a nature that it overwhelms numerous critical objections born from a more formal, aesthetic and artistic sensibility. Truth in Translation can be confident of its valuable contribution to South Africa’s on-going soul searching.
