There is an ironic parity between utterances made recently by Sir Antony Sher and those made some years ago by another South African-born actor, Janet Suzman.
Sher was in this country to promote his newly published, or perhaps one should call this his latest autobiography, Beside Myself. Luminaries of
the British stage seem these days to have uncontrollable needs to write serial books about themselves.
On one of several past visits she made to this country, Suzman was deeply profound on the matter of censorship. Censorship, she patiently explained to several South African gatherings, is an evil and destructive thing. Those active in South African theatre should realise this, she warned, and should make up their minds to resist strongly any attempts by the authorities to throttle their dramatic outpourings.
For many South African dramatists and actors Suzman’s wisdom seemed both thin and late. By the time she made her entrance, plays and productions were being banned or grossly mutilated by the National Party censors and had been for some years.
Suzman’s cautions had an especially hollow ring when, immediately after these generous sharings of her insights, she returned to the United Kingdom and her anxious support of the particularly vicious censorship of the British Actor’s Equity boycott of South African theatre. Hypocrisy is, after all, a moveable feast.
Judging from opinions voiced during his recent book-launch speeches, Sir Antony is of the same cast of mind as Suzman, in that he clearly believes the South African theatrical establishment remains in sore need of wise counsel from its triumphant expatriate thespians.
In his autobiography Sher writes of his decision to emigrate to England in 1968: ‘Why would anyone in Sea Point have become an actor? There was little theatre in the Cape. There was some radio work but no film industry and television didn’t yet exist.’
In another published personal reminiscence, The Year of the King, Sher wrote: ‘At that time South African theatre had just caught up with The Chalk Garden by Enid Bagnold.
This ‘catching up’ was in fact a South African production of the same play that had opened nine years earlier in 1959, concurrently with its London premiere. It’s worth reflecting on what else was going on in Sher’s own backyard, Cape Town, during this lifeless dramatic era he recalls so poignantly.
Throughout the 1950s the late Brian Brooke ran a full-time repertory company and brought out from England such British notables as Dame Sybil Thorndike, Lewis Casson, Emlyn Williams, Duclie Gray. Sandy Williams directed his own production of The Boy Friend. Another South African later to hit the English big time was Joss Ackland, a permanent member of the Brooke Company.
In those years the Hofmeyr Theatre in Cape Town was home to the Leonard Schach Company in which yet another South African born celebrity, Nigel Hawthorne, was then employed. Granted, Brooke and Schach did not operate in Sea Point. They were all of a fourpenny bus-ride away.
Many if not most of the British hits of the era played concurrently with their United States and British productions. Dame Flora Robson starred in two nationwide tours, The Aspern Papers and The Corn is Green. The distinguished US director, Margaret Webster, directed O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet.
The Sixties in South Africa saw the birth of Wait a Minim, to tour the world. Athol Fugard’s early works were seen. As was Michael Macliammor in his one-man The Importance of Being Oscar. A Man for All Seasons in William Roderick’s acclaimed production at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Sir Donald and Lady Wolfit appeared in An Evening of Shakespeare. A Greek classical drama company from Athens toured. Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf opened in Johannesburg the same week it did in London, as did Arthur Miller’s After the Fall. Apart from the glamorous imports, local theatre and its professionals were especially active.
The list goes on and on and scarcely aligns with Sher’s, if not just wildly inaccurate, certainly constipated recollections. To say that the ‘golden years’ of South African theatre were only reached much later with the establishment of The Space and Market theatres is stretching that metaphor very thin.
One last thought with regard to Sher. I have seen him on stage and in films and been fascinated and moved by the depth and gift of his performances, as have his many finer critics and an audience of international proportions. From these ends Sher well deserves his honourings. But I do wish that, like Suzman, he would save his preachings for those few who might still need to hear the tired banalities of the South African ‘liberal’ diaspora, now that the carpet of apartheid indignation has been pulled from under their feet.
Give over, Ant, old chap; and surely it’s time to forego this tedious habit of flourishing your sexuality as some sort of exculpation for your success. In contemporary theatre homosexuality is hardly a professional handicap. Very old hat, as Dame Flora might have said as she helped us catch up.
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