When she was still based in Canada, actress Susan Danford saw Kristen Thomson’s debut play, I, Claudia. The impression this one-woman play made has led Danford to stage its South African premiere.
Claudia is twelve and well beyond her years intellectually. Her parents are divorcing. Her father is remarrying – to a woman portrayed as a slapper, after an engagement that Claudia shatteringly discovers had an unsavoury start.
This domestic drama is related through well crafted, pithy and often comic monologues from four characters – Claudia, her ailing grandfather, Lesley the fiancée, and the school caretaker – an emigrant director from an imaginary country in Eastern Europe, each with their own stylized and slightly creepy mask.
One of our finest actors, Danford switches roles with style and ease. The masks, which are made to Danford’s face and although indelibly striking and adding theatricality, after a while feel to one to be more barrier than supportive device. Young Claudia is putting on a brave face as it were, but her addresses to us are in confidence and in the privacy of the boiler room where she hides out.
There isn’t much momentum to drive the piece, but Thomson convincingly enters the mind of a precocious adolescent and she gives each of her characters pathos and clarity.
In a society with high divorce rates, Claudia will resonate widely with local audiences and the masks are sure to intrigue.
