Guy Willoughby
theatre
Evita Bezuidenhout, aka Pieter-Dirk Uys, has been so much a part of our cultural landscape for 20 years as ever-present as death, corruption and taxes that it comes as a surprise to discover that (according to Uys’s programme notes) s/he has not had her own stage show since 1990. Perhaps that tells us quite how marginalised the theatre has become as a platform for popular local expression during this period.
Love her or hate her, the so-called former Ambassador to Bapetikosweti commands more media time than many perfectly actual political figures she seems to speak more often in Parliament than most sitting MPs and her sayings and doings are perpetual news. In a country whose women traditionally hold their tongues, Uys’s boast that the non-existent Evita is South Africa’s most famous white woman is probably true. Delicious gender-political issues abound. Could a female satirist playing a male, say, have achieved half as much during this time?
Be that as it may, Uys’s latest show Symbols of Sex and State offers a handy juncture to ponder the longevity of this satiric character. On the strength of the present revue, Uys continues to insist that Evita unlike, say, the cutesy stage personae of Casper de Vries or David Kramer is more than a lovable cultural mascot, being first and foremost a vehicle for sharp political protest. That takes real fortitude in a society where independent thought is less cultivated than ever.
Symbols of Sex and State and I must say straight away that the title is both dull and pointless, an odd failure of imagination on Uys’s part gives us Evita in reminiscent mood, as she prepares her famous “reconciliation bobotie” for our embattled president. She is accompanied on stage by an apparently mute young black woman called Koekie (played by Warona Seane), whose job is to sit and peel carrots while madam talks. Seane manages this traditional South African task admirably.
On present showing, Uys is in good fighting fettle. He uses every opportunity to lambase the African National Congress government for corruption, mismanagement and high-handedness, and to decry in witty accents the ever-widening spiral of criminality into which the country has fallen. Evita’s arrival, sweating and spluttering after a nightmarish ride down Rondebosch Main Road with a Nigerian taxi driver, is an hilarious entree to the evening.
Yet all this present-day invective is balanced by Evita’s gratifyingly long memory: through her (wistful) recollections of apartheid’s gory days, from HF Verwoerd to PW Botha, today’s problems are framed by the much more awful dilemmas of the past. This is the true usefulness of a character like Evita, used aright: she registers how far we have come, as well of how far we have to go. Here Uys, and his alter-ego, remains spot on.
There are problems. The danger with apartheid-era reminscence for a satirist who cut his teeth and others’ skins! under apartheid, is that one can wallow deliciously in the familiar dichotomies of the past, when “the enemy” was so clearly “the state”. Uys has a tendency to indulge himself in the jibes at our previous racist leaders that were edgy and dangerous in the 1980s, but are now (especially to a post-apartheid generation) just history. Uys needs a director to help cut and indeed chisel some of this samey-sounding older material into pithier shape, and indeed to tighten up the entire proceedings onstage. (Can one really claim credit, as here, for writing, performing and directing onself in what is effectively a one-man show? I think not.)
Yet Symbols of Sex and State is a rousing, cheery, provocative entertainment, as stimulating as a good cocktail and twice as nourishing. In the second half, the spine tingles as the performer raises the lights and engages in needle-sharp banter with the audience.
Here, thinking on stilettoed feet, Uys/Evita is in coruscating form and on opening night s/he had an exchange across the footlights with a deservedly famous real woman, Patricia de Lille, that was electric, eye-opening and immediate. One can forgive a somewhat over-drawn revue, and the revue artist, a great deal for that.
Symbols of Sex and State is on at the Main Theatre, Baxter Theatre Complex, Cape Town, until June 2. Book at Computicket, www.computicket.com