THEATRE: Humphrey Tyler
WHAT a talented cast in Khaya in the Sky, now on in the Drama Theatre in the Natal Playhouse, in Durban — but, sadly, in the end, what a waste.
It starts okay. The leader of a group of Durban squatters turns out to be called Rudolph Valentino, who speaks with an Italian accent and apologises every so often to Catholics in the audience for any offence. It is not clear why he wears a turban. He has funny shoes, too. This is Lionel Newton, who is breezy and refreshing.
More squatters follow with an assortment of accessories, like a stepladder and buckets — including one very small bucket which is actually a cup which Ellis Pearson (called Zot) carries on his head. That is what we do in Africa. There is also some corrugated iron, and several bricks which fall on the head of Bheki Mkhwane. Mkhwane is Moses Mkhize. He has wonderful visions after the bricks fall on his head and he becomes a Zionist priest. He joins the others in a vividly eccentric version of the Creation. The bit where God invents butterflies is great and I liked the rainbows.
Mabel Mthombeni is Mabel Blossom who comes on dressed voluminously and wearing a doek, but later strips down to be a bride in white with a veil but no husband. Pearson pulls her around the stage in a ricksha instead.
Arnie Field is Anglo Durant, an official from the council who loses his land-surveying gear. Later he is trapped in a remarkable expanding dustbin and prances around the stage like a glittering, berserk, metallic annelid worm.
A lot of this is very funny and there are a great number of visual gags, some of which date back to the heyday of Nicholas Ellenbogen and Pearson in Theatre for Africa’s early Raiders of the Lost Aardvark.
But where is the story? Where is the tension? What about development? Contrast? However lunatic, what about some sort of plot? A climax? Nobody seems to know.
When nothing else is happening, somebody sings a song. Most of the music is unremarkable. In the end Pearson goes to heaven, Arni Field says there’s no place like home and the audience goes home too.
Khaya in the Sky runs until March 5