Pull Up a Seat at ‘Bench’

Hendry and Dwaine are two small-time crooks sit on a bench, psyching themselves up for their next job. But, as we soon discover, they’ve got a lot more at stake than just getting caught. So begins Bench, a new play by Brent Palmer, currently running at the Kalk Bay Theatre.

Directed by Michael Kirch and starring Brent himself opposite the talented Adrian Collins, this production is a real pleasure to watch. It’s that great combination of strong script, spot-on acting and sound direction – the type of all-round winner that you always hope to stumble across. The script, for instance, is chock full of wit without being a one-dimensional comedy, with the acting being as multi-faceted and layered as the text.

It would be easy, given the South African petty crook stereotypes Palmer ostensibly deals in, for the characterisation to give way to being flat-but-funny. Although easy laughs are there for the taking, the actors constantly deliver more, making Hendry and Dwaine complex and believable, even as they are instantly recognisable.

Brent Palmer has the greasy conman down to a tee – his slimeball Hendry hits the stereotypes, gets the laughs, and still somehow manages to find the pathos in the midst of the slick patter. His character is full of brash bluster, but still a man at rock bottom and Palmer manages to give us a tragically fragile veneer of manner that inspires pity even while being thoroughly unlikeable.

By contrast, Adrian Collins is wonderfully subtle with the complex and reserved Dwaine. The laughs his character gets cost more, they tug at something much darker and push the comedy to the edge of its genre as he carefully reveals a man working against the odds to get his life on track. Collins’ performance is a masterclass in understatement – his gestures are contained, his delivery gruff. It would be easy to focus on the more dynamic and expansive Hendry, but you’d be missing out on a truly exceptional moments that Collins delivers. For a white boy from the CBD, his surprising Cape Flats accent is outstanding and hilarious and utterly tragic, all at once.

Script-wise, there were a few moments where I had to suspend disbelief, where I wasn’t quite sold on the characters’ motivations to act the way they did, but these are minor quibbles. The work the team have put in makes Bench a show that’s deserving of your time to sit and linger.

 

Boardroom Blitz

The school playground and the work pause area have much in common and, for all our high-powered posing, working adults are really children at heart:  just as silly, just as irreverent and, sometimes, just as brutal.

OfficeBLOCK – the latest offering from the integrated Deaf and hearing physical theatre group FTH:K – explores this idea. A series of snapshots set around a water cooler of ingenious (at times anthropomorphic) design, newly-appointed artistic director Jayne Batzofin takes corporate cool to a whole new level.

Working from the original concept and choreography by Rob Murray, Batzofin has honed performances and character development from the cast of Christopher Beukes, Asanda Rilityana, Sinethemba Mgebisa and Marlon Snyders. Each of these performers is talented in their own right – Beukes posturing perfectly as the greaseball office bully, Snyders stealing our hearts as the downtrodden office clerk, Rilityana hauntingly torn between her pride and power and Mgebisa charting the fall from innocence of an enthusiastic and ambitious new recruit.

OfficeBLOCK isn’t a linear narrative, so don’t go expecting to sit back and be told a tale. Instead, inventive vignettes of office politics weave layered experiences together to create a narrative experience. Each vignette takes the form of a choreographed movement sequence that tells a tale of insiders and outsiders, of politics and power, of fitting in and speaking out. A typically non-verbal company, FTH:K ask its audiences to “listen with your eyes” and OfficeBLOCK certainly is a visual symphony of exquisitely-conceived choreography.

Each vignette has a different theme and distinctive feel.  Gender politics, newcomer bullying, the dog-eat-dog race up the corporate ladder, all unfold before us with FTH:K’s signature style of exploring dark subject matter through an ostensibly playful physical approach.

There are only a couple more days to feast your eyes on this show. A magical realist romp, OfficeBLOCK is something very different – you won’t get to see theatre like this often so make the most of your opportunity now.

Cunningham a Class Act

It’s the plot to launch a thousand magazine features: a man who’s slowly adjusting to life with a live-in girlfriend freaks out when she announces she’s pregnant. Taking a tough look at his life, he realises that he’s living the picket fence lifestyle he always swore he’s escape and a child seems like the nail in the proverbial coffin of conformity. As he heads out deep into the urban jungle of Johannesburg for a run to mull over his options, he is forced to confront more than a few home truths. Maybe it will be more than his mind that changes. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be his whole life.

Not sounding too original? That’s because you haven’t seen Nick Warren’s take on the tale. Nor, for that matter, James Cunningham’s portrayal of the doubt-filled dad.

See, Nick Warren has a way with words. The two scripts of his I’ve seen performed (this and ‘Dirt’, previously also showing at the Kalk Bay Theatre and Baxter) have both been beautifully constructed and very, very funny. In the case of ‘Sunday Morning’, Warren takes your bog standard new dad in crisis and gives it a fresh zest.  This is one heck of a witty word-workout, without falling into the trap of becoming a one-dimensional funnyfest.

As for the acting, it’s quite simply flawless. Cunningham is blessed with an innate sense for textual nuance, making his delivery spot on every line, every time. Match that with an ease of presence and movement sensibility that perfectly punctuates his text (kudos here to talented director Jenine Collocott) and you’ll have to agree that James Cunningham is one classy actor. Haven’t seen him on stage before? Well, he’s usually based in Johannesburg. Want to see him on stage more here? Support ‘Sunday Morning’. Show some love, people. We need actors of this calibre coming to the Cape more often.

This is a slick, beautifully finished production, the kind of performance I wish we got the chance to see more often. Go and see Cunningham prove that fatherhood’s not for the faint hearted.

PANSA Playground for Playwrights

PANSA opened their festival of new South African playwriting in Cape Town on the 18 and 19 May with four staged readings of scripts selected as national finalists. While Cape Town hosted the comedy finalists, Durban was dealt the drama scripts and Johannesburg  – unable to alliterate with anything theatrically useful – took the one- and two-handers. Being, as it turns out, rather partial to writers, I popped in for two of the readings at the Magnet Theatre.

Suburbanalia by Peter Heyes tracks a chaotic extended family over the course of one Sunday. Three generations get together over the Sunday roast, but the real roasting is just about to begin. Heyes’ script allows us to tuck into the trauma, knowing full well this could be a dysfunctional day in any of our families. While not a strict comedy – there is darkness a-plenty – it generally succeeds in treading the laughter line between genres, while simultaneously playing into and subverting stereotypes. Against the odds, Heyes manages to create a story that is both funny and poignant, political and personal, heavy and irreverent. The balance isn’t always perfectly struck – I found one or two of the more pointed political commentary moments slightly awkwardly integrated and occasional dialogue too laboured for laughs – but a reading is exactly the kind of valuable opportunity for discovering what works and doesn’t in front of a live audience for future stagings. In fact, the fine tuning process is so fundamental to script development that it’s a pity opportunities like this aren’t more widely available, making PANSA’s festival even more vital to promoting healthy text production in SA.

Director Jacqueline Dommisse assembled a strong cast of local talent for Suburbanalia, including several particularly accomplished comedic performers. Much of the humour was, in fact, to be found in their interpretations, with the trio of siblings, though technically miscast in terms of age, proving a particular delight. Jason Potgeiter’s interpretation added a gentleness to his scripted jibes, creating a wonderful nuance to a role that could easily be overplayed. As always, Mark Elderkin’s comic timing was spot on; he nailed the fine balance between pacey delivery and strategic pause, building momentum in scenes which otherwise might have laboured under the dysfunctional family dialogue. For me, much of the laughter was in fact physical – an awkward outfit here, a raised eyebrow there – which speaks both to the strength of the cast and interpretive room in the script.

Song and Dance, written by Megan Furniss and winning the award for best direction for Ntombi Makhutshi, took my vote for most promising premise. Two bumbling thieves break into the space they’ve been staking out, only to discover  that they’ve become disoriented and entered the wrong flat. Even worse, this apartment is barren. When the homeowner returns, they discover to everyone’s surprise that it is the ex Idols Judge, bring up bad memories for one of the thieves. But now the tables are turned and power very firmly rests with the thief.

A tight three-hander with black leads and situational humour? Sounds like a production winner to me. Whilst I found the line between violence and humour quite fine at times, the concept was played out beautifully by the two would-be bumbling burglars Deon Nebulane and Anele Situlweni; Zondwa Njokweni was a wonderfully affected presenter fallen on hard times. While the script didn’t quite deliver on the premise to me, fizzling somewhat by the final wisecrack, I’d love to see this one tweaked – it has bucket loads of potential.

As Jon Keevy has noted, writers create work for actors, director, designers and technical crews, not the other way around. Despite this, lamentably little assistance is given to developing writing talent in South Africa. Emphasis on style over content is a dangerous game. I’m really excited to see PANSA stepping as usual into this space and providing a much-needed forum for the generation of – and support for – new writing.

Cairns Can Do No Wrong

It’s official: I’ll see anything James Cairns is in. The man is astoundingly talented and I can’t say enough good things about his performances. With Sie Weiss Alles, I can add his writing to the mix too.

Despite being happy to see Cairns even if he were reciting extracts from the OED, it was a particular pleasure to watch him perform Sie Weiss Alles for the second time after seeing it at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2011, where it deservedly won a Silver Ovation Award. It is an absolute gem of a script, being nuanced, multi-layered and very, very clever.

Set at the end of World War Two, the play opens with the intriguing tableau of an intimate scene between an SS Officer and a young German woman. Faced with the certainty of an imminent and brutal death at the hands of the encroaching Russian army, fate has thrown into the captain’s interrogation room a woman from his past, brought in for questioning when her father disappears under suspicious circumstances that smack of American defection. Now, he is faced with an endgame of impossible choices. They both have nothing to lose and everything to play for. And so they begin.

The script is beautifully crafted, working on multiple levels of meaning as the pair pass the time by becoming actors in their own version of Hamlet. This act becomes a complex means of negotiating trust, of sizing up and testing boundaries, as they tread the textual line that spans more than just the physical distance between Denmark and Germany. In the drama of the high stakes games they are engaging in, truth is up for grabs to the best performer.

At once witty, clever and deeply disturbing, the play is a complex, beautifully crafted expression of human need, the meaning of acting a role, the high stakes of trust. A war story with a difference, the two-hander is brought beautifully to life by the tight direction of Tamara Guhrs and riveting performances by the actors.

Cairns will blow you away with his understated desperation, his portrait of a man at the end of his rope. It would be so easy for this piece to sink into melodrama, but he paints with such nuance that one believes the character absolutely. Taryn Bennett carried the action extremely well as a woman dexterously treading the line between truth and desire, safety and honesty.

The play-within-a-play element sees both actors having to act the slow building of meaning in the process of acting and, despite the multiple rehearsal scenes this entailed, I was riveted throughout. It is a testament to their performances that not one beat was missed, the tension never wavered and, despite some technical interference on opening night, the pair effortlessly held the audience in the palm of their hand throughout.

Go and treat yourself to the best piece of new South African writing I’ve seen in a long time. Sie Weiss Alles is a tour de force of local talent.

Classic Cabaret at Kalk Bay

Coward & Cole has opened to a revamped dinner theatre venue at the Kalk Bay Theatre. Featuring the musical talents of Roland Perold and Cape Town local maestro Godfrey Johnson, the show pays joint tribute to the individual songwriting genius of Noel Coward and Cole Porter.

The duo are slick and the arrangements are exciting – these are gifted musicians as well as seasoned entertainers and, fortunately, their collaboration plays to each others’ strengths. Musically, the show is a satisfying slice of nostalgia, served  with a local twist. The performers tread a delicate balance between celebrating the original spirit of the songs and adding modern flair – the accents, for instance, play homage to the over-articulation of the stylised 20s radio host, but lapse, to  amusing effect, into plat South African vernacular. Whilst this works surprisingly well for the most part, Perold’s rolling r’s are decidedly more Boerewors Curtain than British clip – an accidentally amusing side note to an otherwise flawless vocal performance.

Personal highlights included an exquisitely moving interpretation of ‘Mad About the Boy’ and a cracking (and seasonally appropriate) “It’s Too Damn Hot.” For those who appreciate a good inside giggle, there’s even a little poke at the local performance industry with a naughty ad lib addition to the rambunctious ‘I Went to a Marvellous Party.’ Both performers look the part in immaculate evening dress, barely ruffling a cuff at even the most taxing virtuoso moments. Johnson particularly has a captivating stage presence – his facial expressions range from the sly sideways glances to stares of such soul searching intensity that each audience member feels pinned to their seats by his eyes alone.

Johnson and Perold have attempted to capture some of the stylised spirit of the era by keeping running banter going between numbers. This didn’t always hit its mark on opening when there were several timing and teething issues, but promises to gain smoothness as the show gels.

With a brand new dinner theatre menu now on offer, Coward & Cole will satisfy both those who long for a little old fashioned entertainment as well as Perold and Johnson’s individual loyal cabaret followings. If you’re looking for mood music, you’ll find yourselves in luck at Kalk Bay Theatre.

Hilarious History-onics at the Intimate

It’s the final death rattle of the Boer War. Two soldiers are manning the last strategic outpost of Boer command, waiting for final orders to be telegraphed. One is a young Afrikaner soldier with a gruff manner and half a head. The other is a Brit double agent in a pith helmet and wedding dress.

So begins Out of Order – a madcap tale full of pithy narrative and passionate nationalism, not to mention a delicious koeksister cameo. It’s South African history like you’ve never heard it before. Mainly, of course, because it’s all completely fabricated. But still, you know. Still.

Out of Order marks the first collaboration between up-and-coming theatre production companies The Pink Couch and The Space Behind the Couch – as if it wasn’t tricky enough distinguishing between their names. The Pink Couch has an eye for comic book style vignettes (employed by director Tara Notcutt to superb effect in Mafeking Road). The Space Behind the Couch has an ear for quirky narrative (last heard in the zany banter of the undead in director Beren Belknap’s Madame Touxflouwe). Together with original animation from Jeremy Carver, this collaboration brings a wealth of young, creative talent to the local stage.

The two-hander features James MacGregor (Shakespeare’s R+J, Madame Touxflouwe) and Gabriel Marchand (Sadako, I Love You When You’re Breathing). MacGregor plays the (oh-so-)straight guy to Marchand’s chipper jokester. There’s a wonderfully balanced energy between these two – their irreverent approach and deadpan banter brings to mind moments from comedy classics like Monty Python. They are committed and clever with the script. They are, also, hellofa funny.

In what could be a case of ageing eyes and ears, I felt the sound levels needed some fine-tuning at times. I also found the animation lost some effect – and narrative clarity – by being projected in a relatively small area on an uneven background. Aside from these small details, I was sold.

Quick march to the Intimate – the show ends this week. If you do, MacGregor and Marchand will have you in stitches. The good kind.

OFFICEBlock Mixes Business and Pleasure

The school playground and the work pause area have much in common. For all our high-powered posing, working adults are really children at heart:  just as silly, just as irreverent and, sometimes, just as brutal.

OfficeBLOCK – the latest offering from the integrated Deaf and hearing physical theatre group FTH:K – explores this idea. A series of snapshots set around a water cooler of ingenious (at times anthropomorphic) design, artistic director Rob Murray takes corporate cool to a whole new level.

The piece is a work-in-progress – a preview of a process that’s going to take FTH:K to Washington to collaborate with another integrated theatre team over the next year. Already, though, it shows much promise, with some inventive sequences and of course Murray’s signature style of exploring dark subject matter through an ostensibly playful physical approach.

Currently, the play takes the form of choreographed movement sequences that tell a tale of insiders and outsiders, of politics and power, of fitting in and speaking out. Featuring the talents of Christopher Beukes, Liezl de Kock, Sinethemba Mgebisa and Marlon Snyders, each vignette has a different title and distinctive feel.

For me, the “Boy’s Club” sequence – featuring the wonderful Liezl de Kock in a look at general gender politics in the office – was particularly powerful. In a scene that begins with a tease and ends with utter degradation, the message hit home like a fist to the face.

OfficeBLOCK is going to go through many changes before it arrives at its final form. As the vignettes develop and coalesce, I think it will come together into a more manageable and satisfying narrative shape. It’s always a privilege to see something develop, though, especially when the process is as enjoyable as this. Watch out for this one – it’s, quite literally, going places.

Race to See Hanekom in ‘Hol’

I don’t usually review Afrikaans theatre productions – my grasp of die taal is indirectly proportional to my conversational insecurity – but I have to say something small about Nicola Hanekom’s Hol, currently playing in rep with Seashells at the Artscape Arena.

I’ve been a fan of Nicola’s since Betesda and Lot – two of her site-specific hits at various local festivals (though sadly, as yet, not in Cape Town). Despite lacking language confidence, I jump at the – sadly rare – opportunity to see Afrikaans theatre in Cape Town.

Hol is more than just an opportunity to see Afrikaans theatre, though. It is an opportunity to see complexity of script, inventive simplicity of set and utter mastery of breath and movement. It’s a chance to see Nicola Hanekom blow you away with what is one of the hardest-hitting, most powerful performances I’ve seen on stage this year.

One woman. A treadmill. Seventy minutes (or, as Hanekom personally likes to measure it, eight kilometers) of astounding performance detailing one woman’s obsession with her physical and mental limits. It’s hard to simplistically label this piece physical theatre. The work is beautifully – sometimes brutally – physical, yes, but the script is so central, the words so elegant and densely packed with layers of meaning that is that rare play that proves just as cerebral as it is visual.

My greatest regret is that my language skills weren’t up to the test of fully appreciating Hanekom’s wordsmithery. Did this prevent me from being completely blown away? Not in the slightest.

You need to see Hol. It is a profoundly powerful work and Hanekom’s performance is a tour de force.

Tale of Horror a Real Joy

Graduating director Merryn Carver has made her mark with a signature piece of children’s theatre. Tale of Horror is an adaptation for stage of Tove Jansen’s exquisite and beloved Tales From Mooninvalley.

Belknap as the Second-to-Youngest Whomper

Tale of Horror features the professional puppet manipulation expertise of Gabriel Marchand and Beren Belknap (old hands at tweaking life into inanimate objects for companies of the likes of Handspring) as well as the fresh talent of the very charming Joanna Evans. Following the journey of the overlooked and (to him) under-appreciated second-to-youngest Whomper child in his seriously magical adventures at the bottom of the garden, the piece weaves an intricate web of make believe.  Carver maintains the story’s delicate balance between gleeful romp and sophisticated narrative, leaving the audience – no matter what their age – transported to a world where we see both the hidden dangers and magic in the everyday.

A particular delight in this witty piece was the sheer visual inventiveness. Belknap and Carver have lovingly reimagined the Whomper world – the multi-functional set and range of puppet styles are a creative triumph. In magnificent cameos, a pair of mismatched Australian Vietnam war veteran sock puppets play alongside some seriously slithery stocking mud snakes. Of particular delight is the mini-human puppet of the Youngest Whomper Child, played to giggling audience approval by a crouching Marchard complete with an ingeniously detachable headless bodypuppet.

In a play with both human and puppet interaction, then, Belknap, Marchand and Evans are called on at various points to be both manipulators and actors. They rise to the occasion admirably and Carver shows excellent direction in focussing the action to either highlight or background their presence depending on the demands of the role.

Tale of Horror is well-crafted with wonderful characterisation and, despite the male narrative lead, a strong feminist message. With this piece, Carver is joining the capable ranks of theatre makers whose work proves that theatre for children does not mean intellectual pandering and that visual play and laughter are gifts that should be enjoyed by all ages. I certainly hope that Tale of Horror finds a life outside of the university environment – it is the kind of quality family theatre that we need to encourage.