Guy Willoughby theatre
It may seem unfair to begin a review of a spanking new South African play by spanking new South African players by talking about their ‘minence grise – dramatist-cum-drama school mogul Deon Opperman – but Opperman, if not his prot’g’s, may appreciate the irony.
Opperman’s response to the challenges of changing audience habits in South Africa is to purvey in his school an ethic of unblushing commercialism and in Who Digs Who! we see both the strengths and the weaknesses in this approach. Opperman’s rather portentously titled South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Art (AFDA) claims to get drama students yer actual, hands-on professional experience “long before graduation” (press release). To this end, the New Wave Theatre Company – “created to facilitate the transition from graduate to professional” – now visits on the public the best AFDA student efforts for the second year running.
In spite of really polished playing (the school’s strength, it seems), we have here a derivative and rather dull text by students that may showcase acting talent, but hardly justifies mounting on a professional stage. This is especially true as the farce genre has recently received a much-needed and thorough-going shake up from more seasoned local stage writers. Who Digs Who! is yer actual rollicking farce, as the press releases used to say, set – wait for it – in a students’ commune, featuring a batch of ill-assorted student stereotypes from across our rainbow nation (as the press releases used to say too). Y’know, air-head kugel, Afrikaner pop, black yuppie and so on. (There’s even an Afrikaaner Weerstandsbeweging-type brother for the pop to ad to the well-worn fun.) Bearing more than a screaming likeness to SABC2’s students-in-digs sitcom SOS – which the young playwrights assured me they have not seen – Who Digs Who! appears to have been written according to a textbook formula, a sort of end-of-term project, which perhaps it was. In their much-vaunted race to get bottoms on seats, Opperman et al seem to think any old text will do – and it doesn’t.
The localised setting adds a smidgeon of interest and the politics of the here-and- now gets a fitful, funny reference now and then; but in the main Who Digs Who! is content to skip on the surface, allowing absurd situation and cliched character to carry the laughs. Coming hot on the heels of Anthony Akerman and Fiona Coyne’s recent politico-farcial excursions, this production seems wildly out of date – another irony, given the cutting edge of South African theatre to which AFDA lays claim.
The best part of the show are the performances. The precision and timing displayed by Talia Rabinowitz (loud kugel) Sindi Mole (acquisitive black yuppie) and Leon Patras (caustic queen) is fun to watch. Craig Jackson as the central jock character must learn that there is more to acting surprised than doing the goldfish- mouth thang; otherwise, he’s good. Who Digs Who! proves that we have wonderful new theatre practitioners waiting in the wings to embrace the stage and kick South African theatre forward on the exhilarating new path it’s treading. What it also confirms, I’m afraid, is that our stage writing remains undeveloped – a second- rate, slap-it-on text is still good enough. Deon Opperman, who claimed fame as a dramatist, might consider the irony in that.
Who Digs Who! by Craig Jackson and Kristy Suttner plays at the Baxter’s Sanlam Studio Theatre until September 22