Alex Dodd
Backing down whiskies in preparation for provocative choreographer Robyn Orlin’s Orpheus … I Mean Euridice … I Mean the Natural History of a Chorus Girl, I overhear embarrassed whispers: “What did Orpheus do again? My mythology’s so kak.”
About one minute into the show I guess that a refined understanding of Greek mythology is about as essential to an understanding of Orlin’s effort as a fluent grip on Seswati. Both have their place in the choreographer’s wildly ruptured narrative, but her screaming statement seems to be that, as South Africans, we’re all clueless about to where to logically and healthily assign all our clashing histories, our unspeakable sexual desires and fractionally-understood languages.
The action takes place in the year 2000 in the psychiatric ward of the Johannesburg General Hospital. Heavy? Yes. There are moments that make you want to weep. Like when a broken and overexposed Orpheus (Mncedisi Baldwin Shabangu) – “an unemployable tsotsi who lands up being a casanova and breaking girls hearts” – pisses in a can and, with the subtlest of gestures, turns his own urine into teardrops. Or when Euridice (Toni Morkel) – “a deluded housewife who, after a bad acid party in the Eighties, imagines she’s the reincarnation of Maria Callas” – dares to strip and, upon proudly exposing her voluptuous pink flesh, realises with horror the implication of an audience’s gaze. So yes, it’s seriously edgy. I haven’t seen such honest, affecting on-stage sexuality since that live sex show in Amsterdam. But it’s also incredibly funny and completely accessible to the average South African (if there is such a thing).
Frankly, there’s simply too much to commend – like Orlin’s multi- media wizardry. The overhead projector and the lightweight video camera are not just trendy accoutrements here, but as organic to the overall choreography as the ballet shoes, the tutus and perhaps even the performers themselves. In terms of using forms that are globally cutting edge to articulate a refreshingly marginal, but distinctly South African vision, Orlin is at the vanguard. It’s not every day that Laurie Anderson meets Ipi Tombi. On what other world stage could you witness a tutu-ed chorus line lubricating their phallic sjamboks or showering an overhead projector with lipstick kisses? Nowhere else that I know of than at the Market.