DURBAN is renowned generally for its beaches, bananas and blonde bikini brigades. It’s also got the dubious reputation of being a cultural backwater whose most popular theatre forms are musicals featuring pretty girls and music over 25 years old.
But mime artist, one-man theatre-revival machine Aldo Brincat is about to change all that. The star of Moron than Off and Suck – two plays headed for Grahamstown – Brincat recently treated Durbanites to a feast of fresh, energised local theatre in order to showcase the more cutting-edge Durban productions which will be featured in the Standard Bank Festival line-up this year.
Called Not the Grahamstown Festival, the event – which ran at the Durban High School hall from June 17 to 21 – did not exactly attract audiences in their droves. “Durban’s imagination is in danger of drying up,” says Brincat.
“Durban audiences are guilty of complacency by not daring to support the talent in their hometown – local artists earn much more money from their shows outside Durban than they do here.”
A case in point is Greig Coetzee’s White Men with Weapons, which will also be in Grahamstown this year. It generated local interest only after doing phenomenally well in the rest of the country.
Debuting in Durban to empty houses several years ago, the play has recently been invited to a season at the Lincoln Theatre in New York.
Here’s a selection of Durban plays to be seen at the Grahamstown Festival:
The Chosen
Written and directed by Mario Scheiss, this play features a mine-bomb of talent in the form of Catherine Mace. Billed as “shocking and controversial”, it’s an exploration of the psyche of a woman possessed.
Arney’s Outrageous Rise
Aldo Brincat’s bizarre but cleverly scripted one-man show whips through corporal punishment, parental incompetence and sex education with poignance and comedy. He changes get-ups as he changes personae, which adds more laughs.
Solomon’s Pride
This minimalist one-hander production by Bheki Mkhwane relies solely on the actor’s charisma. Mkhwane skims through characters like a polished stone along water, as he takes us on a poignant and funny journey through South Africa’s twisted past.
Moron than Off
This is a one-man feast of surreal madness, with Aldo Brincat combining the silent genius of Marcel Marceau and Mr Bean with the dark sadistic humour of Samuel Beckett and the Grimm Brothers.
Men, Women and Marriage
Demon Durban director Garth Anderson never fails to impress, so it is no surprise that his adaptation of Chekhov’s Misfortune, The Grasshopper and The Darlings bordered on brilliance. With sometimes scabrously witty dialogue and featuring Durban’s award-winning actress, Belinda Harward, it is directed with wry comic timing.