Gwen Ansell
theatre
It’s 20 years since Gibson Kente’s Mama and the Load played at the Market Theatre. So the playwright/director’s return last night with his new play,?Ezakithi (It Is Us), was something of an occasion.
But although it won him a standing ovation from much of the audience and gave him a chance to make the customary passionate, hubristic, first-night?speech, I found the view from the stalls a bit disturbing.
Ezakithi has all the typical Kente ingredients: music that fuses tradition?and urban style; dynamic, larger-than-life characters; and hard-working, disciplined choreography from a young, largely unknown cast.
As a playwright, Kente has always dealt in theatrical archetypes. Here, the plot?is our old friend, “Why don’t we put on a show right here in the barn?” with added elements of “plucky outsider proves himself to tyrannical dance teacher (despite a broken ankle) through the support of his buddies in the?chorus line”. The South African twist is that the plucky outsider is white,?in a black dance troupe. Now corn as anyone who’s ever watched an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical knows can work wonderfully well. And bits of Ezakithi do.
There’s a great overture with precise, energetic dancing making skilful use of the Market’s big stage. There’s a magical transformation scene from bare set to?busy church. There are a few good jokes. The whole cast dances with conviction: “Tshona Phantsi” would give the kids from Fame a definite run for their money.?
The singing is rather less successful, with very uncertain pitch on ballads?like This is My Belief. And none of the songs has the instant hit quality?of, for example, the mid-Seventies How Long?
The problem lies in the play’s politics. Kente rather disingenuously told?Hola’s Vuyo Mntuyedwa last Sunday that when he was crafting Ezakithi from his earlier work, Mfowethu: “I was cutting politics out of it.”?In fact, he’s produced a work with a deeply conservative political message. It’s territory Kente’s explored before. During the 1970s, his plays Too Late and La Duma featured angry radicals whose arguments were finally defeated by social reformism. But in those plays, at least the radicals especially Paul in La Duma had good arguments. In Ezakithi Tornado,?the dance teacher and “Africanist” (the author’s term for him), is simply a tongue-tied grouch whose most characterful stage moment comes when he sings Life Runs on Coins. Meanwhile, Tornado’s opponents rant on at length about how “these Africanisms and communisms have caused chaos in Africa”. South African history is rewritten as a tale of liberal accommodation to create a “salad nation”, with no acknowledgement of struggle or suffering. The short-lived personal?prejudice of a person with very little power is equated with centuries of?institutionalised genocide. Agree or disagree, you can’t describe that as a?play without politics. In a literally thumpingly obvious denouement, Mfowethu the white kid turns?out to be just as good a Zulu dancer as Tornado. They shake hands. And by?that stage, even the dances are exciting us less. The clumsy political arguments rob the play of pace.
Kente was one of the pioneers creating a new?language for South African musical theatre three decades ago. Since then,?we’ve seen the innovative dance work of modern companies like Moving into?Dance and choreographers like Nomsa Manaka and Jackie Semela. Now, Kente’s?larger-than-life dynamism sometimes looks suspiciously like caricature and?stereotyping. That’s particularly true of the polarised way Ezakithi handles male and female dance roles. There’s a lot of self-blame flying around in the play. Along the way, the black cast describe themselves as lazy and taking too many holidays and as?the new exploiters and racists. But Ezakithi is not the nuanced exploration that the very real problems of difference, power and corruption?deserve. Rather, it’s a dated cartoon.?
In his closing speech, Kente claimed “I was Madiba when he was gone” (into long-term imprisonment, a minor detail Kente omitted) and suggested?that “the [African National Congress] owes me royalties”.
Funny, from where I was sitting, the play?felt more like a party-political broadcast for the Democratic Alliance. Artslink.co.za
Ezakithi (It Is Us) is on at the Market Theatre, Newtown Cultural Precinct, Johannesburg, until March 11. Tel: (011) 832?1641