Angels on Horseback (On Broadway)

Angels on Horseback cast

Angels on Horseback is a droll cabaret of country and western songs, many self-penned, ironic in sentiment and darkly satirical. Years of theatrical workouts with the Theatresports troupe have finely honed Fiona Du Plooy and Candice D’Arcy’s emceeing and comic techniques. Like skilful cowpokes on the rodeo circuit, they entertain while effortlessly corralling their quarry, in this case the audience, with whoops and humorous songs.

Director Peter Hayes has dressed the show flamboyantly and introduced in-your-seat square dancing, while Du Plooy’s energetic choreography distinguishes this work above the usual revue show.

Much of the material is camp, about failed relationships and sex. With songs like Texas Annie (by the Wet Spots, those authors of the Labia Limbo), Ode to Ryk Neetling and Erotic Kitchen, you wait in anticipation for what will rhyme with ‘doek’. Then there’s the foot stomping These Boots Were Made for Walking. D’Arcy’s tongue-in-cheek Oh Johannes and Du Plooy’s sardonic almost southern spiritual Blood on My Hands are the solo highlights in a show that really has no low point.

Bluegrass is provided by Gene Kierman and the affable Jamie Jupiter. The Angel’s arrangement of the Dixie Chicks’ I’m Not Ready to Make Nice unexpectedly includes Kierman on French horn to striking effect. Kierman also sings Dolly Parton’s I will always love you, and his naturalism is frankly far more touching than Whitney Houston’s best-selling mawkish rendition.

We look forward to the promised sequel.

May 3, 2009 | Tags: , , | Comments Closed

The Tricky Part (Baxter Studio)

tricky part
When Peter Hayes performed Martin Moran’s autobiographical monologue about sexual abuse, The Tricky Part, in Grahamstown earlier this year, many in the audience believed Hayes was the playwright – so convincing is his candid and unaffected portrayal. This is the first time Moran has allowed anyone else to perform the work, and in Hayes he has found a perfect doppelgänger.

Hayes has correctly opted to keep to the original, set in Colorado. In a country like South Africa where sexual abuse is endemic, the distance helps keep perspective and facilitates understanding.

Moran was sexually abused at the age of 12 by a councilor at his Jesuit school. A shy boy becoming aware of his homosexual tendencies, raised in a Catholic cultural context that made desire sinful, he believed he was somehow to blame for his abuse. After all, only the innocent at heart feel guilt. Thirty years later, he tracks down the perpetrator.

Theatre as an art is uniquely well suited to realizing the paradoxical nature of life.
Bob, the perpetrator, is treated with compassion. The abuse is acknowledged as something that has allowed Moran to shine spiritually – “what harms us, might come to restore us”. It’s about the pain that makes one who one is.

The work started as a journal – as Moran puts it: “the pen unraveling the knot inside him”. This became a book and after public readings bravely emerged as a play. There is still some residual tension between the spoken and the written word. It is superbly composed and the language is beautiful, if slightly over written, something Jaqueline Dommisse’s tight direction helps elide.

On the message in the work, Moran says: “A child’s job is to fall in love and the role of the adult is to have boundaries, period!” Bob is an “unconscious shithead” says Moran off stage, who caused enormous trauma through his thoughtless transgression.

With this work, Peter Hayes is top of his game.

September 22, 2007 | Tags: | Comments Closed