Review of the week
Alex Dodd
Upon entering the blocky white space of the Laboratory (how apt) our ears are filled with the sound of a monotone female voice detailing the workings of the human chakra system. However, unlike the soothing tones of new age healers Caroline Myss or Louise Hayes, this voice, devoid of emotion, comes across more like an in-flight safety announcement or a post-lobotomy calming session.
To anyone who has encountered the work of Puck-like choreographer Robyn Orlin, the institutional overtones of the white sheets draped from ceiling to floor come as no surprise. But it’s strangely comforting to be back in the pre-show waiting room anticipating a bit of devilish psychic reprogramming from the mistress of multimedia deviance. And boy, are we in for some therapy tonight. This piece is called Life After the Credits Roll … (a piece for five performers and the spirit of Makana).
At first you might be forgiven for mistaking one of the principal dancers, Nelisiwe Xaba, for a cleaner as she inconspicuously moves across the stage like a hospital staffer with some strange vacuum contraption cleaning the space, creating an empty canvass so to speak. And then there’s the human shadow floating on the ceiling. With overtones of the cardboard cut-out or the chalk line around a stiff in detective movies, any references to astral travel (see chakra recording above) are spiked with ruthless irony.
Then comes the sound of seemingly frantic gibberish which turns out to be two black cops (Sello Pesa and Geoffrey Matentji) trying to persuade their nerdish white comrade in the force (Gerard Bester) to take his gun and play macho. But he’s not having any of it and, with neurotic strains of Woody Allen, implores them: “Ag, come on guys. Let’s just practise with fingers.” At this stage the audience is already muffling gutsy guffaws. The downtown Johannesburg venue lends Orlin’s take off on the crime theme an extra charge and injects a nervousness into all that laughter (satire at it’s best).
But when the James Bond title sequence comes up it’s pure unadulterated hilarity. Makeshift coloured gels on the overhead projector highlight the silhouettes of a white cop and sexy black babe in a steamy seduction scene. But before you know it, the cop, who, judging by the foreplay, has every good reason to expect a blowjob, ends up with his pistol at his temple.
There’s a touch of the Van der Merwe joke here, a smattering of the Pam Greer-style Seventies blaxploitation thriller. It’s all stillettos and guns. And it’s a big fat laugh, but the political themes of Orlin’s piece are already making themselves felt in the self-conscious trashiness of her production values. The point is she hasn’t got cash for anything more ritzy than this.
If we want special effects, she’ll bloody well give us special effects. But don’t expect the Dunhill Symphony of Fire here. Because, as much as she wants to, she just can’t give us the whole Superbowl extravaganza on a National Arts Council budget. And it’s killing her. There are moments in the production when the darker side to her lament are unavoidably recognisable. There are moments of real sadness when Somewhere Over the Rainbow plays: “If happy little blue birds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?”
But most of the time it’s a jolly old runabout – farce and burlesque to the max. At times she rips into the politics of art funding, simultaneously bemoaning and joking about the pressure on the artist to conform to the requirements of a covertly prescriptive cultural policy favouring gumboot dancing and tales affirming the politics of the African renaissance. Orlin’s cheeky handling of the sacred legend of Makana as a vehicle for other arguments may meet with some criticism. “Come on Gerald,” scolds a hilarious Toni Morkel. “We’ve only got 45 minutes to tell the story of Makana or we’ll lose our funding.”
When Neliswe Xaba enters as “the Second Coming … the African renaissance” dressed in a huge ethnic print ballgown, it’s not a moment of unadulterated wonder. Narration from Gerald Morkel, like some dour sports commentator from the old regime, informs us that the fabric is from the Carlton Centre, the earrings from the Chinese Supermarket opposite the Oriental Plaza … and the illusion of magnificence crashes. The implication is mutton dressed as lamb, same old chessboard with a new policy name.
At other times Orlin makes fun of Eurocentric high art. These satirical jabs are at their most scabrous in the form of Morkel trying to play the part of a twee ballerina – thundering across a stage that’s more evocative of Bruma Lake than Swan Lake, and getting all hot and horny at the idea of “a dance coming on”.
Stuck between these two constricting imperatives (Afrocentric vs Eurocentric), emigration (another powerful theme in this piece) starts to take on a rose-tinted glow for the artist. The folly of that dream of elsewhere is the launch pad for another whole comedic routine featuring Gerald Morkel as an auntie in crimplene complete with a brolly, a toy boat and a cooler bag with padkos. Hardly a feasible option it would seem. The relentless blind silliness of white ideas in an African context are also the source of much laughter.
This a dense and brave piece of theatre, dressed up in a populist, frolicky game show format. The ultimate irony is that Orlin’s brilliance is also a kind of thorn in her side. Her unequivocal pleas to funders for more substantial support seem unlikely to be taken seriously when she’s cabable of such ingenuity on a shoestring. But then again, if this is what we get on half a piggy box, who knows what tricks Orlin could pull out of her hat if that too were filled with bright pennies?
Life After the Credits Roll is on at the Market Theatre until May 15