THEATRE: Humphrey Tyler
TWO astonishing plays _ one brought back from New York by one of South Africa’s foremost actors, Marius Weyers, the other devised, written, produced and acted by Andrew Buckland (who lives in Grahamstown) _ are probably the top productions this year at the National Arts Festival. Both of them deserve to be widely seen.
On the Open Road, starring Weyers and Dawid Minaar, with Colleen Nicklin from Durban playing a small but pivotal role, was discovered by Weyers when he was in the United States. The Czech-born playwright, now living in New York, is Steve Tesich. Ilse von Hemert is the director. It is billed as “a dangerous comedy” and it is often very funny. It is also frequently harrowing.
It starts with a man balanced precariously on a black tar barrel with a noose around his neck. It ends with two men dying, each on a cross. What happens in between is what counts. Also, what might happen next.
To start, much of the dialogue is reminiscent of Waiting For Godot. But the conclusion is different. In this play Godot arrives _ only partially _ in the form of a little blind girl. By seeking help herself she offers a form of salvation to the men on the crosses.
Angel (Weyers) is the man on the barrel facing death when the play begins. Al (Minaar) arrives, struggling to heave a broken cart laden with art treasures across the bleak, broken, war-ravaged countryside. He needs a human ox to pull his cart and offers Angel the job (and a reprieve from imminent death).
Together they traipse toward the “free land” which is (apparently) across a distant border. They pillage churches and museums because they will need to prove to the border guards how civilised they are _ that they are not “ordinary refugees”.
During the trip Al tries to teach Angel (a mountain of a man; Weyers at his monumental best) some of the trappings of “civilisation” he will need to convince the border guards that he is desirable enough to be let in.
During the course of this “education” Angel learns to recite the dates of the birth and death of famous musicians, like Mozart, Wagner and Beethoven, also painters like Rembrandt. But to no avail. Trapped in a further uprising, the two men are threatened with execution.
Angel, who has boasted he has no scruples, suddenly finds he is humanly fallible. Even to save himself, he cannot kill a tortured creature (who might be God). The men are themselves tortured and finally crucified. But have they been saved by their gratuitously generous response to the plight of a blind girl, whom they direct to safety from their own dread vantage on their crosses?
Comedy? As much as Waiting For Godot is a comedy.
On The Open Road is an examination of good and evil, morality and justice. It is superbly acted by Weyers and Minaar, the waspish, bespectacled “mentor” whose answers, in the end, are just as puzzling as any of the questions the play asks.
The play premiSred in New York last year. It is likely that was just the beginning.
Also on the Fringe is Andrew Buckland in Feedback. It is a hugely physical one-man presentation, with Buckland playing all the parts.
Directed by Janet Buckland, Feedback is called “an epic tale of the struggle of foodstuff against the oppressive regime of Serius D’Erath, the Frown Prince of Gravity”.
Startling most of the time, sometimes almost biliously vile, it is also in some ways a dramatic cross between Mad Comics, Captain Marvel and Greenpeace. It is a vicious attack on greed, monopolies, corruption, pollution and control networks that manipulate mankind. Also present: a serious-minded vegetarian detective who is waylaid into cannibalism.
Serious stuff, but also often hilariously funny in a very black way.