THEATRE: David Le Page
PSYCHODELIC Cowboy and Sister Nun is an axe-packing, bloodstirring hour of original music from a band of wild riding East Rand cowboys that would have most audiences on their feet were it not for the chains of propriety at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre.
Their rock’n’roll is combined with a story that connects all the lyrics as the production steers this motley crew from Benoni through a spurious quest to achieve the forbidden heights of the Hillbrow Tower. To do this they have to get past Big E, an ancient harpy of a hippie played with venomous incongruity by Norman Coombes on film. This adventure provides a bit of a story, and not a few laughs, for the okes to string out in between the music. But the bit of a story isn’t the true pleasure here. It provides entertaining packaging and plausible continuity, with abundant chirps and puns, but the real enjoyment is in the music.
Leading the band are Psychodelic Cowboy and Sister Nun themselves, Graham and Christine Weir, supported by the virtuoso guitar of Terence Reis as Thorazine Rex and the fiddle of James Baker-Duly, which hollers, sings and seduces throughout. Both Weirs have strong and versatile voices, seductive in the more lyrical numbers, though sometimes a little harsh when they’re belting it out. Solid backing came from Kai Horsthemke on bass, and Terry Hunt on drums, making Psychodelic Cowboy technically almost impeccable.
The music is diverse, ranging from angsty rock to You Have Rights, a quick but interesting little number for voices and percussion, betraying the influence of Not the Midnight Mass.
Looming over the band is a variety of projected images including that of Big E as he leers from his tower perch. They combine the idioms of music video and the kind of B-movie western in which you can practically smell unwashed cowpunchers; in fact, the whole effect of the show is of unwashed cabaret.
After a troubled genesis at the now-extinct Black Sun and a couple of years of evolution, Psychodelic Cowboy and Sister Nun is a very healthy animal. But even if it doesn’t choose to develop any further, it’s well worth
Psychodelic Cowboy and Sister Nun is at the Youth Theatre at the Civic until July 1
Merry Widow meets her matchJohan Spies, young producer of The Merry Widow, is rising to the challenges currently facing opera. He spoke to Coenraad Visser
AT the first stage rehearsal of Lehar’s The Merry Widow, Johan Spies, the young producer of Pact Opera’s production, has butterflies in his stomach. He was first noted for his perceptive stagings of Madama Butterfly and Tosca in Roodepoort, and was acclaimed for his compelling versions of the miniature melodramas The Medium and Cavalleria Rusticana for Pact, but this is his first full-length production for a major
Still, he talks excitedly about working with his youthful cast — “they come to the production fresh, without any preconceptions”. He is particularly taken with Hanli Stapela (the widow), who effortlessly strikes the body poses so essential to evoke the 1920s, the period in which this production is set. The rest of the cast, too, he believes, are stylistically far better suited to the spirit of the production than their predecessors.
But it is a difficult production for Spies, as his task is to restage Neels Hansen’s original production. So Spies “has to look into someone else’s head, through his eyes”, which hamper this prodigy with his demonstrated natural eye and flair for the stage. But there is some leeway — when the singers feel technically uncomfortable with Hansen’s concept, Spies has to show his own hand.
This dovetails nicely with Spies’ approach to stage direction. He disagrees with the sentiment held by many operatic stage directors — that democracy has no place in the rehearsal room. He encourages the cast to air their views, to discuss their reading of the roles. He then tries to incorporate their ideas into his own vision. But he will not compromise to make life easier for them; he will not allow them to run away without facing up to the dramatic challenges on stage: “It is my function to guide the singers to meet these challenges, not to sidestep them.”
Time spent working as stage manager for Capab and Pact, and as production assistant for the Cologne Opera, has made him familiar with the technical aspect of opera productions, knowledge he deems indispensable for an opera producer.
It is this technical know-how that he so respects in Angelo Gobbato, his earliest mentor at the University of Cape Town’s Opera School and Capab Opera. He also admires Gobbato’s immense intellect and his intimate knowledge of every score he produces, down to the words sung by every cast member.
Of the producers he has assisted at Pact, he admires George Kok’s understanding of the characters’ psyches, which understanding allows Kok to make sense of their
A music graduate of the universities of Stellenbosch and Cape Town, Spies recently enrolled in a Master of Business Leadership programme. One day he hopes to be on the management level of an opera company, preferably one staffed by artists hungry for work and fighting to keep their places against stiff competition.
Aware of the current threat to the survival of opera, he stresses that now is the time for creative thinking, not shallow compromise to maintain the present system. He believes that our thinking can be liberated, at least in part, by realising that we need not be bound by European traditions like the Italian.
“We can think along different lines, certainly on a smaller scale, but not necessarily less creative.” And we must add more ingredients to our operatic fare.
Like the enterprising English National Opera’s Rigoletto, set in gangster Chicago, or its Carmen, set in a parking lot, opera productions need not be lavish period pieces. Spies prefers modern dress and settings: audiences may be drawn to a new concept, perhaps simply because they are curious. And he can see the synthesiser replacing the orchestra, even if this requires the orchestral score to be modified.
In an ideal world, which opera would he like to produce? Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, he answers immediately. “It has everything that fascinates you — sex, the supernatural, the struggle between good and
Then he dashes off to rehearse — and to realise his
The Merry Widow opens on Saturday in the State Theatre, Pretoria, and runs until June 24