Undoubtedly the country’s holiday capital, Cape Town is brimming with funky festive fare
Guy Willoughby
‘Save water save the Cape”, breathes the man on the radio as you wing down the N2, through the Huguenot tunnel and into the Peninsula. So the first tip for this post- or pre-millennial summer is: don’t drink the H2O. Stick purely to on-the-rocks liquor and unadulterated strawberry daquiris (this season’s de rigueur drink) and you’ll be fine. Promise.
What else to do during sober moments in the sun-blasted, water-worsted Cape of Good Hope (and bad dope)? One interesting trend in 2000 has been the steady outsourcing of fun from the city itself creaky with traffic, half-built roads and full-tilt traffic-light hand-out artists to the artsy-gallery Boland.
Besides taking a trip to/at Vortex parties and trance events on out-of-town farms in areas as various as Malmesbury, Hangklip and Elgin, you can dress up and watch stuff under the stars at Stellenbosch (Oude Libertas and Spier), Grabouw (Paul Cluwer’s Farm), and Evita se Perron in Darling.
One such out-of-town event worth your trouble is the The Mysteries part of the South African Airways Summer Festival at Spier an eclectic cast-of-many retelling of a clutch of medieval biblical plays in at least four local languages.
A touch too laboured and reverential in the playing, and testing in its grandiose time frame (from Satan’s fall to Christ’s crucifixion, no less), this epic excursion boasts a welter of nifty stage ideas, great sounds and catchy unknown players, and showcases the talents of Spier’s British implants Mark Dornford-May (director) and Charles Hazelwood (musical director).
Back in Cape Town, visit the Nico, now under new management. With the hugest marketing team ever seen, the Nico has been working hard to reinvent itself with pasta-and-play readings, arts mover-and-shaker breakfasts, holistic fairs, lunchtime concerts even the occasional play.
Festive Nico fare includes Carmen Jones (opera), The Nutcracker (ballet), The Guitar That Rocked the World (musical well, yet another misty-eyed Sixties/Seventies “tribute” show, really), and the Cape Comedy Collective’s Cracking Christmas Comedy.
The latter features the usual line-up of Cape Comedy Collective stand-ups, with a rather tired dash of Xmas cheer thrown in: MC Mark Sampson’s ho-ho-ho patter quickly wore thin on the first night, and I do think that Irit Noble should seek a change of subject matter (how absorbing is her sex life, really? I mean, to the rest of us?).
If someone would just buff up his mic technique, Kagiso Lediga remains a spunky comic find (“Would you be the only black man in the Claremont Pick ‘n Pay?”).
It being the restive festive season, revivals abound, and if you’re truly interested in local comic genius, catch the Warehouse Theatre’s Meeting Joe Barber on the apex of Green Point’s pink party triangle. Set in a Cape Flats barber shop, this revamp of last year’s utterly crazed, delightful two-hander stars Oscar Petersen and David Isaac and deserves your bum on a seat. Really.
Talking of revivals, the Baxter Theatre Centre leads with two: Kat and the Kings is the David Kramer and Taliep Petersen tribute/ revival/nostalgia show that returns after a glowing overseas tour.
Of a different order is Fiona Coyne’s drama Glass Roots (Baxter Concert Hall), a wonderfully crisp, penetrating look at South African manners/morals through the odd prism of the advertising industry. See Diane Wilson run away with the part of the dragon-mother Mona (sometimes one wishes she’d bring it back).
Too late for review here is smart-mouth Marc Lottering’s From the Cape Flats with Love, back after tickling ribs in Gauteng. The show is currently on and confirms that, while the Cape’s water has run dry, the Cape wits are in flood.
My personal festive-season party venues? Long Street’s Jo’burg (chatter, attitude: till 1am), Long Street’s Rhythm Divine or 169 (less chatter, more foot movement: after 1am), Green Point’s 55 (convulsive jaw or feet movement: after 4am) and Long Beach (post-sunrise chills). And where’s Long Beach? … Oh, come on, you have to do some of the work yourself.