Charl Blignaut On show in Johannesburg
Should you happen to walk all the way to the back of the large, depressingly cold main entrance level of the Civic Theatre in Johannesburg; and then should you stumble down a couple of stairs and take a turn to the right; there you will come upon a tiny little venue called the Pieter Roos Theatre.
It is in this tucked-away little venue that a monumental theatre event is taking place nightly until July 4.
The event is a production of Athol Fugards 1961 standard The Blood Knot, directed by Mark Graham, designed by Andrew Botha and performed by Ian Roberts and Zane Meas. It is there that Fugards often-performed play about two coloured brothers one who can pass for white; one who cannot is being so meticulously reframed as to emerge as an extraordinary creature.
I have seen The Blood Knot three or four times in the past, but I had no idea until I joined a dozen or so other brave citizens in the auditorium last Saturday night quite how astonishing the play is.
Far too often Fugards earlier works being budget-friendly and politically motivated are tackled by amateur or student theatre groups; and far too often the plays message and its political lesson is lifted out and prioritised.
Graham has decided, instead, to focus on the physical realities of the text; revealing its incredibly detailed set of rituals and its almost sado-masochistic inner structure. Returning to a primitive desire to explain the realities confronting two impoverished men in one room, he has built from there.
You can almost see the actors peel away the levels as the full potential of their characters abilities to twist the past, recreate the present and re-imagine the future is laid out before them.
Now watch a novice theatre hack bow his head in shame and eat his words. I had until last Saturday night absolutely no idea that Fugards play possessed the dimensions that it does.
Seamlessly structured, essentially presented and laden with perverse possibility. I had no idea until shown by a group of consummate professionals.
You can see The Blood Knot at the Civic Theatre in Braamfontein until July 4