Andrew Wilson
WOZA ALBERT 15 years on? If it was Brecht, there would be no question: the German’s works had sufficient form and structure to carry them decades into the future — something the loose, informal construction of Woza Albert doesn’t have. Brecht is offered to students as an example of didactic, political theatre; commentary on the ideologies of his time — but what does Woza Albert offer latter-day audiences, pinpointing, as it does, the political lie of the land in the 1970s and 1980s?
Quite a lot, it seems, judging by the response of the largely young audience. White schoolboys glanced furtively over their shoulders at a group of black students, anxious to see if it was acceptable to laugh at the antics of the two prisoners, or at the white boss cursing his black worker.
There was a distinct awareness that what we were watching was not as much theatre as it was a retrospective docu-drama; and this is where the production finds its home. Granted, with the removal of the feverish illegality that gave protest theatre its particular edge, the laughter generated now is not quite as loud or rebellious; the incisive, damning moments are no longer flinched at, but are now absorbed with an air of acknowledgement.
Director Bo Petersen uses her considerable theatrical experience to make this lively production a flowing, continuous whole, keeping almost exactly to the original format of the 1981 Market Theatre production — thereby locating it firmly as a work of, as well as about, its time, even down to a reference to the Market Theatre.
She allows UCT drama school graduates Zwelibanzi Majola and Zolani Cata free rein within this framework, and both are excellent in parading before the audience a vast array of tragic and entertaining characters living under apartheid, waiting for Jesus to visit.
When he does come it is to raise, one by one, the fallen leaders of the struggle from the dead. It is at this point that a young, 1990s audience is most clearly able to see the degree of loss and desperation of a generation that gets its identity from having fought for an identity.
At the Grahamstown Festival, Capab’s new production of Woza Albert is at the DSG Hall on July 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, and at Nombulelo Hall on July 8