Defending the South African

JCS for Easter

I have always loved going to the theater and being lucky enough to have lived for 50+ years under the lights of the Great White Way in NYC, I went a lot! As an adult, I'd say an average of once a month. Every birthday, holiday and anniversary always included a night at the theater as part of the festivities. (I saw Jesus Christ Superstar twice on Broadway. Once in high school - we studied the libretto in religion class! And once for Easter in 2012.)

As often as not, I would go to see the original cast early in their opening season. (And if there was an understudy performing that night, I would promptly turn my tickets in to exchange them for another night's performance when the star was in the house. No charge.)  I am a total unadulterated, unapologetic, full-on, remorseless theater snob. You gotta problem with that?

Going to the theater had been one of my parents' favorite forms of entertainment too and they took me to my first Off-Broadway show. "Try to remember the kind of September..." And following their example, I most likely turned our sons into theater snobs at a very early age when we took them to see their first real professional musical - Jonathon Pryce as Fagin in a West End production of Oliver in London. More please! Sean Connery and Ann-Margaret (not together) were even in the audience.

(I am a ballet snob and an Italian food snob too. That is what happens when you grow up with the best! Non est mea culpa!)

@ The Abbey Theatre in Dublin

My theater snobbery even transferred across the pond. Whenever I was in London, I would spend an inordinate amount of time in the West End and at Shakespeare's Globe indulging my London theater fix. Ditto for Irish theater in Dublin.

Since moving to South Africa though, I have followed a simple theater snob rule. No Broadway or West End revivals for me here. Only home-grown and original African theater. Like Zulu and Athol Fugard plays.

Mama Mia? Pass. Jersey Boys? You gotta be kidding. Rocky Horror Picture Show? I'm cool. Saw it in New York and London!




I recently made an exception to my unwritten rule with the one-man show Defending the Caveman. I saw the original in New York with the original caveman of course, Rob Becker. But recently I met Cathy Plewman whose husband Tim bought the book from Rob Becker and brought it to South African audiences years ago. Although penned by Rob Becker, Plewman adapted the script for Southern Africa and went on to win the Vita Award for Best Actor in a comedy. I think that makes it worthy of an exception to my rule.

Over a long, successful career, Plewman, of course, has been around the theater for forty years – reaching all the way back to works like Chorus Line, in its original London Production. After a five year hiatus on performing Caveman, Plewman stepped back onto the stage at Emperor's Palace for this past weekend only to add to his 1544 sold-out performances of the longest-running and most successful solo comedy in South African theater history. This humorous play about the hunter and gatherer in all of us has played to over one million people and many hundreds of sold-out shows.

Tim's version was very different from the Becker production Vince and I saw many years ago. Tim even began the evening by defining some of the local slang he would be using in his monologue. Thank goodness or we would have been totally lost! Every once in a while there would be a glimmer of the original Becker book, but Tim had done such a thorough job of South African-izing Defending the Caveman, it was like seeing it for the first time.

We went with another couple, Lila and Nigel. She is American-born and he is South African-born. Judging by the laughter coming from both of them, it appeared that Tim had managed to cross the cultural divide quite seamlessly. Bravo caveman!

Fugard at the Fugard

The first time I heard the name "Athol Fugard" was in  the early 80's when I saw Danny Glover perform on Broadway in one of Fugard's most famous plays, Master Harold and the Boys. The play, banned from production in South Africa, won the Drama Desk Award that year for Outstanding New Play. It was my first real glimpse into South African politics and the cruelty of apartheid.


I would have been satisfied to just see a Fugard play in South Africa, ... but to see 82 year old Fugard himself at the Fugard Theatre on his triumphant return to the stage after an absence of 15 years in a play he wrote and directed? Home run!



Vince and I saw him in The Shadow of the Hummingbird, his latest and sold out production in Cape Town, straight from its sold out run at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. In the play, Fugard takes on the role of Oupa, a retired South African teacher living in self-imposed exile in Southern California, and is joined onstage by a young South African named Marviantoz Baker who plays his grandson, Boba.  Athol Fugard's writing  has moved from the political to the emotional. This is a play about love, as Fugard notes, “This is the most naked statement I have ever made about that mysterious emotion.”

Athol Fugard was born in 1932 in Middleburg, in the Karoo. He has written close to 40 plays, four books and several screenplays. Many of his works were turned into films, including Tsotsi, based on his 1980 novel, which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. His writing spans the history of apartheid in South Africa through the first democratic elections and into present day post-apartheid South Africa.

In 1958, Fugard organised "a multiracial theatre for which he wrote, directed, and acted", writing and producing several plays for it in the area known as District Six in Cape Town. The 335-seater Fugard Theatre is located within the historic Sacks Futeran building in the same district, with the renovated Congregational Church Hall in Caledon Street as its entrance.

Although he stills travels extensively, as of 2013, he considers the Karoo village of Nieu-Bethesda as his permanent home.

they serve Athol Fugard's signature wine in the lobby

PS for pre-theatre dining we chose the Dias Tavern, right across the street from the Fugard Theatre ... great chicken peri peri and grilled baby calamari tubes. Bravos all around!

PPS The Shadow of the Hummingbird is coming to Joburg's Market Theatre in August.

The Owl House

Some 50 kilometers north of Graaff-Reinet in the valley of the Sneeuberg Mountains is the tiny hamlet of Nieu-Bethesda. There are no street lights. There are only a couple of streets anyway. In fact, it has only recently had electricity installed! Nieu-Bethesda sells no petrol, has no banking facilities or ATMs and no one will take your credit cards anywhere. (Warning: if you visit, bring cash and a full tank of gas.)

What it does have is a reputation for being an artists' colony and a place for creative people like Athol Fugard whose play The Road to Mecca is based on the little town. Fugard was actually born in the Karoo in nearby Middleburg and still uses Nieu-Bethesda as his retreat. There is even a Fugard Festival that happens at some point in the year. (We saw signs.)

And one of the characters in Fugard's play The Road to Mecca was based on an eccentric artist who lived in Nieu-Bethesda and whose home is now an art gallery and museum called The Owl House. Her name was Helen Martins and she was a recluse who took refuge in Nieu-Betehsda after her failed marriage left her alone and destitute. She began to create art objects and sculptures using broken glass and cement in order to "search for the light" in her closed world. She and her assistant Koos Malgas created a menagerie of camels, human beings, lambs, sphinxes and owls which are all displayed in the yard. Many of the inside walls of her house are even  "wallpapered" with finely ground colored glass giving it an enchanted igloo feel.

"The Camel Yard"

I love these skirts made from beer bottles.

This cat has eyes made from car headlights! Clever up-cycle.

inside the house

She particularly favored the owl, but there are many sculptures of mermaids and angels too.

And the other thing of note to visit in Nieu-Bethesda is the Brewery and Two Goats Deli.

We stopped in for a brew (or two) and a platter of cheese and kudu salami.

They make their own goat cheese!

And Karoo Ale ...

A Night of Legends

We have been wanting to go to the legendary Market Theatre since we arrived in Joburg. We'd been waiting for something uniquely South African. Legendary even. And we got it when the legendary Mbongeni Ngema returned to the stage to tell the story of legendary South African warriors in The Zulu.

The Market Theater was opened in 1976, operating as an independent, non-racial theatre during the country’s apartheid regime. It is named for the site on which it stands, which was originally a produce market, also known as the Old Indian Market or the Newtown Market, which closed after 60 years of trade and relocated to another part of the city.
 
Over the years the Market Theatre hosted a number of internationally acclaimed artists including Athol Fugard. It has also introduced the works of many of South Africa’s leading playwrights and directors, including Matsemela Manaka, Reza de Wet, Welcome Msomi, Zakes Mda, Pieter-Dirk Uys, Gibson Kente, Paul Slabolepszy, Adam Small, PG du Plessis, Kessie Govender, Bartho Smit, Maishe Maponya, Percy Mtwa, Deon Opperman and Mbongeni Ngema.

The Theatre's twenty-one international and over three hundred South African theatre awards bears eloquent testimony to the courage and artistic quality of its work. During the past three decades, The Market Theatre has evolved into a cultural complex for theatre, music, and dance. Today, The Market Theatre remains at the forefront of South African theatre, actively encouraging new works that continue to reach international stages.

Mbongeni Ngema is probably best known in the United States for his Broadway production of Sarafina! The musical was nominated for five Tony Awards and the original cast recording was nominated for a Grammy Award. Sarafina! won eleven NAACP Awards and was adapted into a feature film which co-starred Whoopie Goldberg, Miriam Makeba and Ngema himself.

We saw Ngema's historic new tour de force, The Zulu, on the final performance of its limited run at the Market Theatre. The Zulu started out as a successful musical before its current dramatic incarnation. The Zulu had its world premiere at the 2013 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this summer and had a ground-breaking season in Zululand before continuing its run at the Market Theater.

Writer and Co-Producer Ngema, one of the giants of South African theatre, returned to the stage as an actor for the first time in 27 years in The Zulu. Primarily a one-man show, in about two hours Mbongeni Ngema recreated the birth of the Zulu nation and the often violent struggle against rival tribes and foreign domination in South Africa. He was aided by a musical accompanist and assistant storyteller, Matshitshi Ngema.

the bare stage

“The Zulu follows the story of my musical of the same title, only in more depth,” says Ngema. “My new show has been in the creative pipeline for several years. It is inspired by the experiences I had as a small child, listening to the wonderful stories of heroic deeds that my great-grandmother, oka Mkhulutshana Manqele, shared with me. Her skills as a story-teller kept a wealth of our history alive."

It was a riveting night of theatre. And one filled with legends.