On the fringe ...

on the fringe ...

We were in Cape Town last weekend for the beginning of the second annual Cape Town Fringe Festival, a week of alternative music, theater, dance, magic, comedy and performance art.

City Hall

The center of the action was Cape Town City Hall which housed the box office and a media center, as well as a number of performance venues. Other venues around town included Jubilee Hall, the Galloway Theatre, the Fugard Theatre, Sgt. Peppers and the Alexander Bar.





 

the Fringe Club

City Hall was also the location of the Fringe Club. The Fridge Club had food, drink and live music on tap all day every day during the Festival to entertain audiences between Fringe performances. We were actually in town to see Orpheus in Africa and although it was performed at one of the Festival's venues, the Fugard Theatre, it was not technically part of the Fringe Festival. But that didn't stop us from taking in some of the alternative spirit on display at the Fringe Club!

Orpheus in Africa

Orpheus in Africa, the Fugard Theatre production of David Kramer’s brand new musical, returned to the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town last week and we returned to Cape Town to see it!

We just could not make it to Cape Town for its world premiere sold-out and limited season at the Fugard Theatre earlier this year. And unfortunately Orpheus in Africa never made it onto Joburg as I had hoped.

In fact, I had totally given up on being able to experience a real piece of original South African musical theater while living in Africa. Everything we had seen in the theater so far in South Africa had been a drama -  like The Zulu, Hinterland and The Shadow of the Hummingbird. So I was thrilled when I read in the newspaper that Orpheus was returning to Cape Town for another limited run in September. A reprieve! I immediately bought tickets - front row center - for the first weekend of its run at the Fugard.

the curtain from our seats in the front row center!

Orpheus in Africa is based on the little known true story of Orpheus McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers’ tour of Queen Victoria’s colonies in the last decade of the 19th Century. Orpheus McAdoo was a free born son of a slave and a graduate from The Hampton Institute in Virginia. He was the first African American impresario to perform in the British colony of South Africa where he and his group achieved unprecedented success. At the same time the musical charts the evolution of African American music from spirituals (Jubilee songs) to jazz and ragtime.

David Kramer welcoming the sold-out audience

Orpheus in Africa was an opportunity to step back into the Victorian era and experience the powerful singing style of the Virginia Jubilee Concert Company as they recreated well known classics such as "Roll Jordan Roll", "Swing Low Sweet Chariot", "Hush" and 'Deliver Daniel." Alongside early spiritual and jazz standards, the musical narrative was also moved along with several original songs by David Kramer.

David Kramer is one of South Africa's most successful creators of musicals. He has won numerous awards in South Africa and abroad including the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Musical in London for Kat and the Kings in 1999.

"McAdoo Jubilee Singer to Entertain!" curtain

Virtually the entire original South African company returned to reprise their characters including Aubrey Poo as Orpheus McAdoo and Lynelle Kenned as Orpheus’s fiancé, Mattie Allen. They were excellent as was the entire cast.

And I just read this weekend that the limited run has been extended into January so don't miss your chance to see it too! Alleluia!

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.