THEATRE: Peter Frost
TALK to Pieter-Dirk Uys and the phrase “hard-on” keeps coming up. Not the pelvic kind, but a theatrical response performers should be provoking in traditionally flaccid South African audiences. His new show, Bambi Sings the FAK Songs, currently filling houses Upstairs at Elaine’s in Cape Town, does just that, going straight to the metaphorical groin. It is uncomfortable, deadly and smart to boot.
Uys’ honeymoon with the new dispensation is officially over; the bridge-building of hob-knobbing with the liberators in Funigalore done. The gun is once again cocked, ready to spit fire. Selective memory and the Afrikaans past are in the firing line this time, and Uys resurrects super-slut Bambi Kellerman to pull the
It is a very different Bambi confronting audiences this time. The lost vrystaat floozy of old has grown up and is now a Well-Travelled Girl, wise, worn and finally
A quick refresher course: Bambi is Evita’s estranged sister — another Poggenpoel black sheep — who left South Africa and married infamous Nazi war criminal Joachim Kellerman, a cruel and violent man. “Babylon Bambi” nevertheless did the right thing and followed him to Paraguay, fleeing Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. There, Kellerman finally checked out, leaving our Bambi with only an urn to mark his memory.
Now she’s back home, raising funds to bury the beast, which isn’t easy — no one wants the remains of a dead Nazi, not even those historically sympathetic to the Nazi effort — “the world has Alzheimer’s”.
Backed by her musical director, Godfrey Johnson, Bambi dusts off her FAK (Federasie van Afrikaner Kultuurvereniginge) Songbundel and delivers a shining selection of songs, arranged by none other than Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in the 1950s after a particularly drunken group sex scene.
The FAK’s definitive booklet of volksliedjies provides ample fodder for Bambi to expose the sins of the past – – personal, national and universal. Her story unravels through the familiar songs; initial Uys side-splitters give way to reveal a far darker show. Acceptance of abuse at Kellerman’s hands is traced to abuse at home, tucked away “safely” in Bethlehem with a plethora of admiring ooms.
The liedjies themselves, dripping irony, are at first funny (with top-notch angstful arrangements) then macabre as the Nazi origin of some of them is revealed.
The unsettling, sometimes hellish undertones are countered by Uys’ evergreen vampy camp. Bambi’s a bit of a diva now, part Patti Labelle, part Marlene Dietrich, confident enough to try her hand at musical experimentation, with delightful results.
Move over Ella, here comes the new scat queen, trilling like a budgie on uppers. Her send-up of the angstful Kabaret, so popular with the black polo-neck brigade, hits the spot, too. She’s all wide eyes, gazing into the middle distance with taloned claws stretching into The Void, grasping for The Truth. You’ve seen it before, and if it ever struck you as bizarre, you’ll love Bambi.
Only trouble is, her FAK interpretations are poignant and horrifying, a point lost on one loud urban troglodyte who blissfully sang along to the songs of her youth.
Bambi’s abuse has made a tough woman of her and there’s a strong feminist flavour to the show (“WIFE — Washing, Ironing, Fucking Etc”). Uys’ comment is timely and never overstated, tailored as it is in the layered finery of his comedy. It points tapering fingers at those happy to conveniently forget or alter the past and warns that it won’t disappear so easily.
Bambi Sings the FAK Songs runs at Elaines till Sunday, then opens at Over the Top in Muizenburg on March 6