On stage as the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute — Impempe Yomlingo, Pauline Malefane has a foreboding and imperious presence. In this award-winning production she casts menacing glances and her entrances are preceded or trailed by simulations of lightning and thunder. But in real life she transfers little of that combustible persona: she is disarming and courteous.
When the Mail & Guardian spoke to her at her guest house in Melville, Johannesburg, we had to wait for a while in a separate room. When she came in she was beaming and apologised for keeping us waiting. “I was on the phone,” she began, and asked us whether we wanted anything to drink or if we wanted to move to a different room.
She co-wrote The Magic Flute — Impempe Yomlingo, the production in which they refashioned Mozart’s The Magic Flute, a Western classic, for an African audience. It tells the story of Prince Tamino’s quest to rescue Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, from the Priest of the Sun, Sarastro.
Malefane has appeared in the Golden Bear Award-winning movie uCarmen eKhayelitsha, an adaptation of Georges Bizet’s opera, Carmen, as well as in The Mysteries, a rendition of biblical stories. “The way we do our things, the way we translate, the way we put together the show is the same, although the script is different,” she said. The result is that “Mozart doesn’t feel stiff anymore. It’s more lively now, more vibrant.” This is a natural consequence of using the marimba, an instrument that has a groovy, resonant beat, quite unlike the “sustained feel of the orchestra”.
The response to the production is split between the euphoric and the acerbic. Michael Billington, writing in The Guardian, described it as “stunning” and “inspired”; her performance in uCarmen eKhayelitsha was also received rapturously, with The Observer describing her performance as “the Carmen by which others should be measured”. But at home Robyn Sassen on the Arts Link website wrote that The Magic Flute has been “transformed into a rash of sticky Africanisms”, slipping “into the realm of mediocre African liturgy”.
Malefane shrugs off the criticism, seeming to suggest that this comes with the nature of the production. “There is a conservative opera audience which believes that opera should be done in the way it was done 100 years ago,” she said. “These people don’t agree with the way we do our stories. They won’t come, probably.” She said the production is a breath of fresh air and points out that this is an attempt to relate and narrate an essentially European story that shows exposure to the elements active on the African continent. Thus the argument by some black people that opera is not for them but for the elite suddenly wavers.
She sees her long-term goal as “building a township audience”. This goal, which she admits “will take time to achieve”, was given a timely boost by the decision by the show’s producer, Eric Abrahams, and the Market Theatre that every seat for the month-long run will be free to the public. “He surprises us all the time. He is so passionate about South African talent,” she said, with genuine feeling.
When we turn to talk about her family, Malefane describes it as a “rainbow” – perhaps a logical consequence for someone born in the epochal year of 1976 and who grew up in the settlement of Khayelitsha in Cape Town. South Africa’s rainbow project became a personal one for her in 2001 when she married British opera and theatre director Mark Dornford-May – the couple has three children, aged 23, 10 and five.
Straddling the professional and the personal doesn’t come easy. “In those first months we had a professional relationship — and I always say because we started with the professional, by the time we moved to the personal we knew how to work with each other.” She said they see each other differently now that they are a couple. “We fight about things. There are arguments, like most couples, but we try not to take our fights at home to work and vice versa.”
Malefane is at once a mother, a wife, a performer and a writer. These are roles and responsibilities that she plays out with such grace and ease that neither the continents of Europe and Africa nor the colours black and white matter.
This production, which opened in London after a season in Cape Town, won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival. All its performances in Johannesburg are free of charge. For information phone the theatre on 011 832 1641