Humphrey Tyler
THERE has been a mad scramble by local artists to get a booking at the Hilton Drama Festival next month and many have been disappointed, but the final programme is a hugely promising combination of serious (but not solemn) drama with a leavening of full-on fun on the burgeoning Fringe, not to mention exciting dance and first-rate music.
Some of the top shows this year, like last, were among the most popular at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. Others have already had very successful runs in Durban.
This is the second year running that there has been an ambitious drama festival in the Natal Midlands. About 10 000 people visited the festival last year, over two and a half days.This year the festival is more than twice the size.
Apart from seven shows on the main programme (all of which will take turns in the Hilton Theatre, the second biggest theatre in Natal and probably the biggest country theatre in South Africa), there will be 11 shows on the Fringe.
There is considerable diversity. Curiously, one of the most sophisticated pieces of theatrical fun is a play written by a nine-year-old girl, Daisy Ashford, at the turn of the century. Called The Young Visiters (sic), it is a startlingly perceptive insight into the lives, manipulations and idionsyncracies of the aristocracy (including the Prince of Wales who wears “a small but costly crown”). This is a Napac production with rollicking music by Scott Joplin.
Another charming piece which actually brought tears to the eyes of many in the audience in Grahamstown (the way people sometimes dash away a tear at a wedding) is Take the Floor, by Susan Pam-Grant and DJ Grant. It’s directed by Lara Foot, wth the same outstanding cast that played in Grahamstown a few weeks back.
Rip-roaring fun for Goon Show look-alike aficionados is Raiders V, a Nicholas Ellenbogen piece in the tradition of the Raiders of the Lost Aardvark, which has been a hit from Cape Town to the Edinburgh Festival. Ellenbogen stars with James Ngcobo.
Themi Venturas is a maverick Natal musicals director who has had a string of hits. One of his best, Shoo-bop, Shoo-bop, is on the main programme. Star of the show is an effervescent Lisa Bobbert.
Gilda Blacher is back again with a new show and there is some resonant classical music in the Hilton College chapel, notably an organ recital by the college’s musical director, Patrick Harty, who performs also with a young trumpeter and with the college choir. Leandros Stavrou, a top classical guitarist now settled in Natal, will give two concerts.
One of the problems last year, the organisers admitted, was that they “gravely underestimated the number of people who would roll up and consequently grossly under-catered”. It seems unlikely that this will happen this year. There will even be a Chinese take-away service, not to mention a beer tent (which will serve every variety of liquor), elegant sit- down meals at the Hilton Old Boys’ Club, and “real teas with proper cups”.
Not to mention a craft market which will “definitely not (sniff) be a flea market”.
* The festival runs from midday on Friday September 9 until Sunday September 11.