THEATRE: Donna Marshall
Watching Brett Bailey’s Zombie in the middle of Nyanga was not nearly as esoteric an experience as might have been expected. The venue, which turned out to be little more than a stark community hall, was integral to the experience of the performance, as was watching the audience’s response.
The play centres around a true set of events that happened in Kokstad in 1995, when 12 schoolboys were killed in a minibus accident. One of the survivors insists that he saw 50 naked women standing at the side of the road. Whether or not this is attributed to the overactive imagination of a pubescent schoolboy is never the question as the village is plunged into a hysterical witch-hunt. Especially susceptible is the character of Xolani, who starts hearing voices calling to her from her grandmother’s cupboard.
Rife with accessible symbolism and a flowing rapport with the audience, the storyline is uncomplicated enough for one to concentrate on the characters and their individual and communal emotional responses. Expect no logic or rationality in the themes, as this goes against the very nature of indigenous folklore.
Rather appreciate the representation of the people’s passion and belief, as this embodies the very human nature of the story.
But it is this audience integration that fails a thoroughly engrossing chain of events. In Nyanga, the expectation of mass appreciation turned out to be short-lived, as onlookers felt free to join in the actors’ dialogue and burst into uproarious fits of laughter at moments that hardly seemed to warrant it. (Witchcraft? What a crock!)
To the players’ credit, particularly the younger ones, they remained unrattled, delivering flowing performances worthy of the professional stage. So the play becomes dependent on the seriousness of the audience, which may not really be a desirable condition.
The rural post-modernity of the story is effectively drawn by the set, and commendations to most of the cast – including the chickens – that took to crushing soda cans and snapping flies. The vocal casting is excellent, and on its own the music and singing would make a more than worthwhile show.
Perhaps it would be a shame for non-black audiences to see this play at a ”legitimate theatre venue”. As a low-budget recreation hall presentation, the play is a success. Projects like this one lead the way in establishing the African theatre as accessible literature.
Zombie has just opened at the Nico Malan Theatre in Cape Town