The Real Review

The Chilli Boy after numerous sold out seasons in Durban and Johannesburg was the break-through production for writer Geraldine Naidoo and performer Matthew Ribnick (now her husband). First staged in 2002, it finally comes to Cape Town encouraged by Ribnick and Naidoo’s extraordinary success last year at the Baxter with their more recent creation Hoot. Ironically, this has meant it arrives actually at something of a disadvantage.

Both are humorous, one-man shows with well-crafted scripts, slickly performed and original in conception. This time, the rather delicious scenario revolves around the chilli boy, a white gangster called Troy, who is unexpectedly possessed by the reincarnated spirit of an old Indian woman with family matters to set right on earth.

Unfortunately, The Chilli Boy, from a critic’s point of view, appears rather obviously to be the artistic antecedent of Hoot. Both are exercises in the humour of recognisability, but with Hoot Ribnick and Naidoo had moved on to depict fresh characters we rarely see portrayed on our stages. It also had sharp commentary on the here and now of South Africa. Chilli Boy feels comparatively dated and the stereotyping stale with its lower-class, white mother, the Joburg gangsters – Greeks and ‘Lebs’ – and its caricature of Indian machismo.

I fear this time Naidoo and Ribnick may face some disappointment with Cape Town and visa versa. The material is not exotic enough – as it would be for say a London audience – and the humour, the characters and their vernacular are familiar yet somewhat at a remove from local taste. Cape Town should look forward to their post-Hoot phase.

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Most white South Africans are oblivious to the enormous hurdles and daily dangers faced in simply trying to make ends meet if you’re a black taxi driver. Cushioned with credit and the systemic privileges inherited from racial capitalism, many whites remain alienated from the lower classes overwhelmingly constituted by people formerly classified under apartheid as non-white. These seemingly intractable divisions the boyish Matthew Ribnick, whose break-through came with The Chilli Boy, relishes and exploits with humour in Hoot.

Ribnick seamlessly takes on about twenty keenly observed characters of different races, usually signalled with various woolly hats, to tell the story of one Harold Potgieter, whose rather disappointingly stereotyped ‘bitch-wife’ – later countered with some male-bonding – takes what the bank doesn’t repossess when his business fails. Now destitute and alone (he has no friends), he ends up boarding in a subdivided flat run by an Indian family. His adventures with the other classes begin. He joins a commuter taxi operation.

Shows like Hoot are exercises in the humour of recognisability. They may border unavoidably on stereotypes, though the fact that his characters are types seldom portrayed on our stages, keeps it fresh. What makes Hoot special is that it feels authentic. Employing snippets in African languages, Ribnick’s observations go beyond the impressions usually filtered through our rigidly stratified society by social osmosis. He has clearly spent much time hanging out with his subjects.

Both Chilli Boy and Hoot were written with Ribnick’s wife Geraldine Naidoo, who also directs his performance. Hoot is funny, broadly appealing and – as the enthusiastic response he has received shows – leads the charge in the daunting work that needs to be done to forge our fledgling democracy.

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