He’s the only South African theatre director with one, never mind two, West End theatre productions. He’s Ian von Memerty. Umoja, “it had the tomatoes, the onions and the cheese before I came to it — now it’s a full salad”, threatens to become this year’s London smash hit.
A Handful of Keys is now in a pre-London run at Johannesburg’s Civic Theatre. Keys, a frantic, hectic, mad and joyous pas-de-deux-de-ivories, a rollicking romp over two piano keyboards, has a charity gala West End performance set for February before hopefully settling into a theatre, like Umoja, for a long run.
The charity is of Von Memerty’s making. Its goal: to raise a further R1-million for a hopefully life-saving bone marrow operation for his son, Oscar. Every night of the Civic run helps a little — one night in London will almost pay the entire hospital bill.
Keys has been much updated since the original 1994 two-header featuring Von Memerty and Bryan Schimmel. The latter has shimmied off to the United States, leaving Von Memerty the opportunity to discover Roelof Colyn, arguably the season’s big new ‘find’.
Colyn’s timing and Marcel Marceau-like exquisite facial expressions threaten even to upstage Von Memerty. At 25, Colyn’s youth and energy bursts bubbles all over Von Memerty, and each night you see the latter gamely swimming upstream to keep up.
The pale-faced youth’s interpretation of Richard Clayderman, miming even worse than Brenda Fassie, is hysterical humour that is heart-stopping. Von Memerty’s Billy Joel is not an impression — it is the “vertically challenged” pianist.
“Impersonation is a combination of the inner meeting the outer, and vice versa,” claims Von Memerty. “The observer paints the target on himself. Get all the tricks they do — their walk, their talk, and those tricks will tell you who they are.”
The audience knows the angst Von Memerty is going through over his remaining child. Nevertheless, he denies that onstage his is a painted smile. “While I’m not quite hiding pain, day to day my life is full of laughter. First diagnosis was six years ago, so I’m not in the first stage of shock.”
“Fear, pain and stress are present in my life, but,” he adds, sweeping a hand expressively round Giovanni’s in Parkwood, “everyone in this restaurant has that.”
Von Memerty comes from a reactionary background. None of that has stuck to him: “How easily in the worst of times black South Africans still managed to laugh.”
I was present as the curtain went up in the West End, as the celebrities thronged the Shaftesbury Theatre’s foyer. Von Memerty, all suit and dirty white takkies, put a hand on my shoulder and smiled. I took it as a gesture of confidence, a nudge towards success.
Now he confides that one evening it was a mask. “The doctors had told me just three hours before that I had to raise another R1-million. I really didn’t want to do the foyer thing that night.”
It’s not true that Britain is a nation of shopkeepers. It’s a nation of piano players. So a two-man piano show is not an obvious West End hit. But neither was Umoja. “It was instinct, just as with Keys,” confesses Von Memerty. “With Keys we opened with a total of just 95 bookings, but I confirmed a run of months. With Umoja I knew from moment one we were going to London.”
“I took on Umoja for several reasons — firstly because people needed help. For myself — I wanted to drown myself in a tidal wave of hope and emotion. And because South African culture is a business in an embryo — there is huge potential on the world stage.”
He flashes out of the restaurant and into the traffic. His Roll Over Beethoven is also packing them in, in Durban, but he wants to cast a quick eye over it. Surely his motive to fill seats is the purest and most worthy of support: Is to save a life.
A Handful of Keys runs at the Tesson Theatre at the Civic Complex, Johannesburg, until December 30. The London Charity Gala performance is at the Shaftesbury Theatre February 10. Umoja is on nightly at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London. www.umojatheshow.com. Roll over Beethoven is at the Barnyard Theatre, Gateway shopping centre, Durban, until January 27. For info call 0860Â 102Â 370