Photo: Giovanni Sterelli
As desert encroaches on Cape Town, nuclear waste leaks into the surroundings, seeds die in the ground, water is rationed to the populace while the country’s military authorities hoard supplies. and taxi associations run the city – these are the final days before the environmental apocalypse of 2020.
Noah of Cape Town is one of the most original works you are likely to see. In South Africa’s first solely a cappella musical, Graham Weir’s inspired compositions and beautiful lyrics are given magnificent expression by Amanda Tiffin’s arrangements for 16 voices.
With fine performances from (among others) Christine Weir, Eben Genis, Nqobile Sipamla, Gys de Villiers and Anton Luitingh, the result is a moving theatrical experience that stands head and shoulders above the clichéd, formula-driven, tired sounds of musicals the world over.
Dicky Longhurst’s ingenious, mobile set of metal triangles that assemble and disassemble, functions almost as a metaphor for the a cappella nature of the whole creation.
The at times over-written dialogue however is not as strong as the music, and the under-developed book, with the introduction of last minute love plots, suffers credibility problems largely because the environmental message is confused with mumbo jumbo, off the wall, New Age conspiracy theories, though these are nicely spoofed in second half by an officially sanctioned psychic fraud.
Producer Simon Cooper is to be congratulated on his courage and vision to stage this ambitious and extraordinary work.
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In one or another guise the archetypal story of Beauty and the Beast has been with us since Apuleuis’ Cupid and Psyche. For a particularly imaginative retelling readers might want to refer their children to Bellinda and the Monster as told by Italo Calvino. The stage adaptation of Disney’s animated film is of course the cutesy version.
The producers, Pieter Toerien and Hazel Feldman, and resident director Alan Swerdlow, must be congratulated on pulling off a local production that tops the Broadway version. Perfectly cast, Jonathan Roxmouth (Gaston) is in an elite class; Talia Kodesh (Belle) more than measures up and can kick like a burlesque chorus girl; and comic Neville Thomas (Cogsworth) is faultless.
Aimed specifically at children as it is, of the corporate family musicals this is probably the best in terms of having something decent to say. It is about otherness, the courage to be different, about looking through the superficial and the fashionable, and it encourages the reading of books. However, in competition with video games (global sales of which now surpass DVDs and CDs in turnover), the high tech effects endeavour to create a complete illusion that leaves nothing to the child’s imagination.
The critic may gasp at its visual gaudiness, chafe at the over amplification of the orchestra which removes its live quality, may wince at the script’s endless corny puns, yawn at the derivative, cloying and formulaic score, but children, and probably most adults, will be captivated by its ebullience and irresistible pantomime charms.
Cheap in comparison to what you’d pay elsewhere in the world, tickets are nevertheless expensive for South African families, but audiences should consider that there are probably only two theatres on our entire continent that can stage this high-tech spectacle. Cape Town should count itself lucky to be able to pull of such a feat in a relatively small venue.
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