Review of the week
Stephen Gray
Just for starters, this is a very fine show. It deserves to run forever … Here are some reasons for arriving at such an opinion. The first is that A Touch of Madness is taken from the writings of Herman Charles Bosman and, although some of the items are wilfully trivial, they are still show-stopping. Even if you have no clue who Bosman is or was, they work well enough on their own.
Another reason is that Nicky Rebelo, who has snippered the bits together and who directs, has an infallible sense of how theatrical the lesser-known Bosman could be. Self-pitying, callous (“When my father died in a mine accident, I was almost moved to tears”), swanky, here he has the gift of the gab, all right. Subtly and carefully, Rebelo makes of him a memorable encounter.
Then there is David Butler, the sole performer, standing in for this cast of dozens. At the national Arts Festival, he strained a bit to win his audiences. Now at the Tesson Theatre at the Civic every phrase is in place, no nuance is missed. He simply gives the performance of a lifetime.
He can go exuberantly over the top in the deeply funny schoolboy skits. He can go bemused at policemen ducking half-bricks while his lookalike, Dr Malan, tries to speak in the Jo’burg City Hall. He can be soppy and silly. He can go, well, murderous, when he is sentenced to swing for exactly that: the crime of homicide. Quite an involving case, this moon-smitten poet, who wrote his life out by the inch.
Butler’s Bosman is the kind of disreputable character one’s elders used to warn one against. If you respond to him, he will touch you for a Klippies. The rain-battered fedora over one eye, the hank of old school tie, the double-breasted suit ending in what as children we called boemfies: unironed, gritty wide bottoms. Definitely seen hard times, seedy.
So this portrait builds up into the velvet- tongued conman who makes for compulsive viewing. In a demented way, his jibes come from all directions. There are chilling moments when Butler – who does physically resemble his author – is just caught in the lighting as one, or another, of the few photos we have from which to recreate the mysterious original.
Butler and Rebelo indeed have some nerve to take on that other fine Bosman one-man band, Patrick Mynhardt, whose shows from the work have merely become South Africa’s longest running entertainment. However, there is no sign of the genial, coffee- swilling Oom Schalk Lourens here.
Butler is rather the backveld bumpkin’s wicked creator, the anarchic Bohemian clown of Jo’burg’s gutters, the intellectual who had an acid soul.
The staging is blessedly simple, ready to up and travel. A bench and a lamppost are a bus stop in Eloff Street. There is a desk area with typewriter and bottle. Behind is a street scene that once was, buzzing with daily city life. One of the sketches about the dagga blues takes place right there. The theme is that you recognise it all. But then, as in the best of old-fashioned showbiz, it was only a haunting shadow, after all.
Lastly, if South African theatre is to pull itself out of its slough of what is often semi-competence and predictably bland, here is how it must regenerate: with the word, with the performance. Let it be dangerous once again.
A Touch of Madness is on at the Tesson theatre at the Civic in Johannesburg until September 19