South African theatre appears to be in the doldrums of self- indulgence, even though play makers are finding plenty to say, writes Matthew Krouse
The National Arts Festival has been a glorious gathering of gurus – all strutting about like peacocks. It’s their moment, a time to get what they deserve. A time for nonchalant playwrights and directors to be hounded by performers and the press. It has to be this way – an event of this kind is an ultra-concentrated reflection of the industry, after all.
The festival is to the cultural media what the Bosnia crisis has been to CNN. A moment to get out there and really express oneself to a readership that, for a moment, genuinely cares. One gets the feeling that we critics love the thought that shockwaves may run through the Settlers’ Monument when we badmouth productions. Year after year the same overall criticisms surface – either the festival is held in the wrong location, or the 1820 Settlers are no reason for a party, or the party itself is too white.
But it’s the work that talks loudest. And this year it has tried to talk “deepest”. Breyten Breytenbach’s epic Johnny Cockroach deserves a special mention here. A mere two-and-a-half hours long, director Marthinus Basson had his cast of 14 meandering around like sanctimonious monks. Granted, they were doing it on one of the finest sets seen in the country to date.
“Long ago,” it began, “there was a theatre in Africa called the Twentieth Century”. What followed was a Guernica-esque look at the tribulations of our subcontinent, in an intentionally complicated language that only served to mask some unsurprisingly stock views and stereotypes.
Nobody wants to hear the problems of the Boer (Johannes Kerkorrel), and an English soldier (Anton Smuts) who died for colonialism thousands of miles from home while wives, mothers and daughters (Aletta Bezuidenhout, Zoliswa Kawe and Beatrice Joubert) sit impotently on the sidelines and judge.
In the end, after all the horror, it is only the cockroaches (Lanon Prigge and Samantha Pienaar) that survive. While all of this makes perfect sense, getting to the point was quite an ordeal.
A production equally as fussy, and equally predictable in plot must be Mandla Langa and Hugh Masekela’s Milestones. Set around the crisis of ownership of a piece of land surrounding a village called Ngoza, Langa’s text tries too hard to say too much, instead of telling a simple story of people living at the mercy of history. The work is to some degree redeemed by Masekela’s wonderful tunes.
Basically, Ngoza falls foul of the spirits, evil that can only be purged a generation later by the successor to a leader called Baba Joshua (Owen Sejake). This turns out to be Joshua’s daughter Zodwa (Gloria Bosman) who, upon the death of her father, rises to responsibility, showing the triumph of human strength.
Nomsa Manaka’s choreography, coupled with garish traditional costumes by Lyn Leventhorpe, create something of a Sun City extravaganza, on an African renaissance theme.
Zenzi Mbuli’s Boots and Malcolm Purkey’s Love, Crime and Johannesburg show two opposite faces of Johannesburg. The first, a lighthearted display of gumboot dancing, seems to work against a realistic depiction of the hardship experienced by men on the mines. But what the hell, like a local version of the famed Irish Riverdance, its virtuoso cast delight in what they do – and will no doubt delight audiences across the globe.
While it enjoyed a small revival in the late Eighties, these days the Brechtian form isn’t popular at all. As a result, Love, Crime and Johannesburg, with all its merits, will probably battle for audiences when it runs in Johannesburg later this month.
It is Brett Bailey then – the Stromboli of community theatre – who is engineering a new route for big, barrier breaking, sensational dramas, of interest to a broad audience.
His decision to dramatise the experience of Nongqawuse, the Xhosa seer whose visions brought disaster for her people, has been highly controversial. Not because people have openly criticised Bailey’s methods, but because everybody knows that in the telling of traditional African stories, sensitivities run high.
The Prophet definitely stuck out as possibly the most original work on show this year, its only failing being in the use of 10 child actors who seemed ill- qualified to carry some of the narrative weight they were given.
The success of Handspring Puppet Company and William Kentridge at theatre festivals across the world has definitely whetted the appetites of other major practitioners in the country. With a sense of dire greed, a lot of this work seems to have been tailor- made for world tours – i nstead of simply making sense to the audience at home.
As a result we have a season of drama coming from Grahamstown that, for the most part, tries too hard to impress.