With three weeks to go, HUMPHREY TYLER begins the countdown to the Grahamstown Festival of the Arts
RELAX. If you are going to the Standard Bank National Arts Festival next month, you won’t have to walk under step- ladders. Grahamstown will be ready for you.
The staff in the Monument building no longer go to work through the toilets. There is no more ash. White faces are white again, black faces are no longer grey and the building is wholly functional and ready for business after the runaway fire that wiped out the theatre (and other venues) last year on the dreaded Ides of August.
But you will notice some scars. The ceiling tiles will be missing. Whole sections collapsed in the blaze; the rest have been removed to make way for a state-of-the-art fire extinguishing system that will hopefully prevent further devastation.
The colourful Cecil Skotnes murals in the huge foyer have been restored but are under wraps until the repairs to the building are finally complete, probably not until the end of the year.
The theatre will be working — one of the hottest tickets there is a scaled-down version of Bizet’s Carmen, presented by Capab Opera — but instead of some 900 plush, upholstered seats there will be about 600 bucket seats in raked rows. However, they will have cushions. The permanent seats will be installed after the festival.
Early visitors to the festival (it starts on Thursday July 6 and ends on Sunday July 16) should hit the pavement running if they are to get into all of the main programme shows that open the festival.
Apart from Carmen, they include Anthony Akerman’s play about the rebel Natal writer Roy Campbell, Dark Outsider, currently running in Johannesburg (reviewed below); Faustus in Africa, put on by William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company; Terence Rattigan’s In Praise of Love, and Journey, a workshopped production directed by Peter Hayes. His production Get Hard premiered nakedly in Grahamstown last year, then toured South Africa.
Festinos can chill out a bit then, but they should watch out for Tobie Cronje and Annelisa Weiland in a cabaret- style project called Kort Voor Lank, directed by Stephan Bouwer; a replay of the Athol Fugard classic, The Island, with Tony Award-winners John Kani and Winston Ntshona, now performing at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg; and the South African premiere of Broken Glass, the latest play by Broadway giant Arthur Miller.
Hunch, presented by the stars of the hit Frank ‘n Stein, Ellis Pearson and David Dennis, who promise similar mayhem, will be among the shows winding up the festival. It is also selling tickets fast.
One of the star turns in New York at present is a piece called The Compleat Works of Wlm Shkspr (Abridged). Unfortunately it will not get to Grahamstown. But South Africans on their way to the festival include members of the Jakesbeer Company who will present Springtime for Jakesbeer, which involves a boy actor who turns out to be a girl. The production features (according to a modest company representative) “sparkling” love scenes. Naturally this is on the fringe programme. And coming from London is a choir from the Putney Girls’ High School.
Of course, now that South Africa is democratic in principle, the question is, what will playwrights who previously were full of angst about oppression do? Pieter- Dirk Uys, having given the new South African government time to sort itself out, is back in Grahamstown with a pretty typical political comment, You ANC Anything Yet, after brief curtain-raisers elsewhere.
Paul Slabolepszy, one of the hardest-working local artists, seems to be into sport. He is having a very successful run in Gauteng now with his rugby play, Heel Against the Head, and he is sending his cricket-fanatic hero of his earlier play Under the Oaks, Corky Labuschagne, to Grahamstown to feature in a one-hander, Tickle to Fine Leg. It features James Borthwick.
What is on black minds? What about job creation? It’s a vital topic but isn’t it boring for a play? Not so. There’s a fun piece on the fringe about a man who grabs his opportunities in the new South Africa and opens a successful car-wash business.
More seriously, Zakes Mda looks at corruption in government, pretentious, self-important cabinet ministers and a democracy that degenerates into dictatorship in a fictitious African country.
And, of course, John Ledwaba, the winner of this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Drama, has his play Moja Moja on the main programme.
That’s not to mention the creation this year of a whole hotel dedicated to jazz, the (ahem) Jazz Hotel (formerly the Crillion), and a transformed Scout Hall which for 10 days becomes the Crinklecut Comedy Theatre.
Has anybody mentioned the Winter School and dance, and the Gumboot Rap Show that is described as “strictly structured and very witty”? Or the first festival carnival parade? No. There is no space.
The main programme is available from big branches of the Standard Bank in the main centres, and the fringe programme should be out, with luck, from Monday. Phone toll-free for more information on 0800-12-1000. Look out for the Mail & Guardian supplement to the Grahamstown Festival on June 30