THEATRE: David Le Page
LARA FOOT has directed a rather noisy silent movie.=20 It’s called Womb Tide, and is masquerading as theatre=20 in the Laager at the Market, complete with a little=20 boer clown, an alternatively vulgar and sympathetic=20 heroine, and a properly precocious child.
The filmic elements abound. Brian Webber plays a=20 congenitally awkward Afrikaans man, combining the=20 femininity of a Harold Lloyd with the acrobatic mishaps=20 of a Chaplin. The dialogue is perfunctory, especially=20 in the beginning where, for half an hour, entirely=20 phatic language is woven quite successfully into=20 fragmented but compelling conversations, filled out=20 superbly with the language of mime and gesture. Music=20 steers us into every required mood as unashamedly as=20 have a thousand old studio melodramas.
But the movie metaphor, consciously worked into the=20 play by Foot, works only so far; there are many more=20 purely theatrical elements. Designer Cathy Henegan has=20 chosen to leave the facebrick wall of the Laager=20 largely undecked. It towers above her cast suggesting=20 the imaginative squalor of railway houses, the barracks=20 of South African suburbs, or institutions mental or=20 penal. Its starkness prepares us for tragedy.
For though Leila Henriques’ and Webber’s characters are=20 hilarious, they are two socially retarded poor whites=20 who literally stumble through love at first sight into=20 married life, parenting a stolen child, and old age. It=20 is an essentially tragic story and the clunky happy=20 ending that Foot has tacked on in true Hollywood style=20 doesn’t change this. But the awkward ending doesn’t=20 spoil our enjoyment of the bulk of Womb Tide, which is=20 engaging and often hilarious.
Foot has made abundant use of visual metaphor, and it=20 is largely successful; somehow the overblown=20 conventionally slapstick elements prepare us to follow=20 minutely the beautiful symbolic progress of lovemaking,=20 of pregnancy, of ageing and crisis.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this production=20 is the unexpectedly shocking qualities of seeing tea=20 spilt about the stage, of seeing half-cooked eggs=20 scooped awkwardly by hand, of actors soaked to the skin=20 by “rain”. These devices are never casually used. When=20 Henriques’ character miscarries, scooping a mess of egg=20 into a plastic shopping bag to throw away, the banality=20 of the material used to symbolise the tragedy combines=20 heartstoppingly with the pathos of the scene, as we=20 realise that for her, the womb tide has ebbed.
Foot’s casting reinforces our sense of the tragic=20 inadequacy of “Mom” and “Dad”, Henriques and Webber,=20 for Mark, the child of the trio, is played by Joss=20 Levine who looks the most adult of the three and takes=20 a controlling perspective in playing the part of=20 narrator. Levine is extraordinary to watch as he=20 captures perfectly the mannerisms of a child, whether=20 nervous or ebullient. But all three actors are=20 tremendously satisfying, as their bizarre family life=20 unfolds through encounters with the tooth fairy, fights=20 with the neighbours and visits to the drive-in. While=20 the role of language grows as the evening proceeds, the=20 pleasure remains largely indescribable, Zen-like in its=20 unwillingness to be verbalised.
It is also part of the courage of this production that=20 it relegates language to a supporting role, for=20 language always represents the hope of its authors that=20 it will endure. Foot and company are obviously content=20 that their creation should collapse with the end of its=20
At the end of Womb Tide, Henriques’ and Webber’s=20 characters are left amid the wreckage, both of the=20 stage and their lives. The play hangs about them like=20 an elaborate but collapsed laboratory experiment. Yet=20 among the tattered remains gleam the exploded parts of=20 some substance never seen before.
Womb Tide runs at the Laager Theatre, at the Market in=20 Newtown, until July 8, and at the Grahamstown festival=20 from July 10 to 16