Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg
`There’s one sure way to beat the racist bastards of this world,” conclude Bessie (104) and Sadie (102) Delaney somewhere near the end of their marathon tale of growing up black and surviving a century of civil injustice in the United States, “and that’s to outlive them”. To have the last word.
The tale of the first 100 years in the lives of the feisty Delaney sisters was first told to a New York Times journalist in 1991, in turn leading to an autobiography and then in turn a hit Broadway play.
That play has toured the US and has now transferred to the main stage of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, the product of one of the Market’s many innovative international exchange programmes. The play is called Having Our Say, and boy, do they have it. For over two-and-a-half hours the sisters, played by Micki Grant and Lizan Mitchell, haul out the photo albums and turn back the clock, in so doing, offering a potted history of America’s civil rights movement and an invaluable document for posterity.
As a document or as a book, Having Our Say is undoubtedly an insightful example of the power of the ordinary person’s life in the shaping of history; of the triumph of the human spirit and black America’s long shuffle to freedom.
As a stage play it is, quite frankly, overwhelmingly boring.
Quite obviously, the parallels between the African-American experience and the black South African experience are striking and quite obviously the play is rooted in a keen desire to keep history alive.
Equally obvious, however, is the reality that while apartheid bred a dynamic and diverse range of theatrical experiences and modes of storytelling, its American equivalent is, in this case, perfectly happy to rely on the power of the spoken word.
So there they sit, two charming, wizened and darling old ladies and they talk. They talk and talk and talk and then it’s over. Like a radio play or a history lesson.
Whatever power lies in their tale is all but negated by its didacticism. A huge, gorgeous backdrop of a family portrait aside, there is precious little attempt to employ any of theatre’s unique elements to bring the Delaney sisters’ tale to life; to make it gripping and draw one in.
No enactments, no sound effects, no film footage, no subsidiary characters, no drama, just pathos.
Not even two remarkable and sustained performances and an overarching belief in God, country, church, family and paying ones taxes can stop the theatre from emptying little by little after each interval.
Having Our Say at Market Theatre, Newtown, runs until July 25. Tel: 832- 1641