MUSICAL THEATRE: Bafana Khumalo
AS a concept in the producer’s mind, Born at the Right Time (Upstairs at the Market Theatre) might have worked pretty well. But when it comes to the execution of the project, it doesn’t work at all. Described as a “unique interpretation of the music of Paul Simon”, this is an attempt to deliver the music of the short Jewish geek from Queens, New York, in acapella style and, I suppose, contextualising it in South Africa.
It should have been unique, for some of the best voices — those of former Jozi Jozi Guiders Jabulani Maphanga, Oupa Papo and Mokete Motseki, former Sarafina singer Themba Ngcobo and Karin Jerg — have been assembled to guide one through the early days of Tom and Jerry, through the mid- Sixties pseudo-profundity of Simon and Garfunkel, and finally to the later cultural plunderer of Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints.
Now anyone who has listened to the music of this man — either when he was still singing with that tall, gawky, prematurely balding friend of his, Art Garfunkel, or in later years, when he became a cultural magpie — knows that a lump in the throat is an obligatory consequence of listening to his work. But Born at the Right Time is a happy-clappy-singing-dancing-natives-in-the-jungle presentation, with a madam to give it some suburban cred.
Complete with T-shirts emblazoned with “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika”, the five happy-clappers tell the sad tale of a boxer who couldn’t get back home in a manner that suggests that he was really quite happy. They even manage to make Homeless — Simon’s 1987 collaboration with Ladysmith Black Mambazo — sound like a lefty slumming in the township jol.
Missing in this production is that middlebrow sense of loneliness and desolation found in thumbing one’s way along American highways, sharing cigarettes on a cold wet night on the road, and being plain miserable.
Throughout the performance there is a lack of understanding of the man’s music. These are just good voices singing reasonable songs with no attempt to portray anything deeper than the words themselves. This project should be revisited — perhaps then one will be able to leave the theatre with some emotion.
Born at the Right Time runs until January 14