Freak Country

Photo: Ruphin Coudyzer

Photo: Ruphin Coudyzer

Despite programme notes that try to throw the net wide, the plot, various references in the text and a portrait of Robert Mugabe on set, locates Paul Slabolepszy’s sketch of a new play, Freak Country, pretty firmly in present-day Zimbabwe.

Aaron Blakey, a quintessential Slabolepszy shmo, after knocking one too many back during his flight, while in transit to the Comoros for a film shoot, fills in his custom’s form facetiously and as a result is arrested by the authorities. Colonel Moyanga, played by the wonderfully inscrutable Jerry Mofokeng, reads the film script, ‘Operation Wildfire’, as a coup plot. Soon, Blakey, now accused of being a real mercenary, observes “the part begins to play you”. The dark humour of such a situation is comic dynamite, but the script falls far short of its potential.

The opening 20 minute monologue by Blakey to a stone-faced soldier Ndlovu (Peter Mashigo) is superfluous. The jokes are only mildly amusing and it robs the piece of its prospective dramatics for the next 30 minutes; all the pertinent information initially conveyed about Blakey and his situation is subsequently repeated, but without the benefit of our curiosity.

Antony Coleman is 15 to 20 years too young for Blakey. Although on the facts (we learn he matriculated in 1988) he is correctly cast, his frame of reference and outworn slang places him in Slabolepszy’s carefree baby boomer generation, and one keeps wishing the playwright had rather pursued this.

An ill-judged extrication in the form of a contrived escape plot takes over the last 15 minutes of the play.

The real conflict of interest here is between the discourse of a free society, where Blakey can tell the president “to kiss my ass” and the impoverished discourse of a dictatorship, where such an exertion of a fundamental right to free expression will get you before a firing squad. The slippage between the two is ripe for dramatic dark comedy, but Slabolepszy only touches on this and fails to get to grips with what is after all the heart of the scenario.

February 20, 2009 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed

Mooi Street Moves (Theatre on the Bay)

Hannes Brummer as Henry and Rantebeng Makapan as Sticks

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.

October 9, 2008 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed