This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

30th December 2007

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The Sunday Independent asked me to write a "Top Five" summary of the best of South African theatre in 2007 ...

The Magic Flute
Recently, it’s been difficult to travel very far through South Africa’s arts scene without coming across the name of William Kentridge. Quite apart from the fact that his work has been widely exhibited and published, his version of Mozart’s most famous opera stunned local audiences when it ran at the Civic in Johannesburg and at Artscape in Cape Town during September and October. Tickets were a rare commodity months before the show opened, bearing testimony not only to the esteem in which Kentridge is held but also to the international reputation that the production had acquired after seasons in Brussels, Tel Aviv, New York and Lille. The South African cast impressed and the visual display was, to say the least, spectacular. While Kentridge’s Magic Flute was prestigious and not a “people’s opera” in conception or, indeed, in promotion (ticket prices were prohibitive), the concurrent run at the Baxter Theatre of Mark Dornford-May’s consciously “accessible” version, Impempe Yomlingo, suggested an interesting debate about the relationship between art and society in the South African context.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
This production makes it onto the list primarily because it was a rare theatre event: Tom Stoppard’s best known, funniest and most intellectually taxing play hardly ever finds its way onto South African stages. It requires a large cast and therefore a large salary budget, but is not the kind of thing likely to be performed by State- or privately-sponsored theatre companies. Alan Committie and Rob van Vuuren found a solution to the problem by combining their own talents (and those of other professional performers) with the enthusiasm of students from the University of Cape Town’s Drama Department, under the direction of Christopher Weare. The result was a quality production at UCT’s Little Theatre that gave Committie and van Vuuren a chance to exhibit their abilities as tragi-comic actors – something a little different from Committie’s appearances as Johan van der Walt or in the popular Defending the Caveman, and van Vuuren’s role as Twakkie from The Most Amazing Show (look out for other work by van Vuuren and T*M*A*S partner Louw Venter; you won’t recognise Corné and Twakkie).

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Edward Albee’s modern classic is an elevating, stimulating and ultimately exhausting experience for any audience member. Imagine, then, being one of the actors turning the crackerjack eloquence of his script into a piece of theatre, night after night – an achievement in and of itself. For three months this year the cast of Virginia Woolf did more than simply face down that daunting prospect; they turned it into a carefully modulated piece that was received with acclaim at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, at the Baxter in Cape Town and the Market in Johannesburg. Janice Honeyman directed two veterans of the South African stage, Sean Taylor and Fiona Ramsay, who were matched in their bitter and witty depiction of domestic meltdown by the younger pairing of Nicholas Pauling and Erica Wessels.

Bafana Republic
This show gets the nod partly for its topicality and partly for Mike van Graan’s satirical pen but, mostly, as a vehicle for displaying the remarkable skill and versatility of rising star Lindiwe Matshikiza. With 2010 fast approaching and with no shortage of ridicule-worthy activity accumulating around the World Cup, Bafana Republic made a timeous appearance. It was interesting to note audience responses to the show, which is often touted as “hilarious” but is not only funny – indeed, much of the content should provoke anger or despair, and the insistence on seeing the show as pure comedy perhaps bears witness to the human (and, in this case, specifically South African) preference for levity over substance. Notwithstanding which, Matshikiza’s knack for imitation, her comic timing and her all-singing-all-dancing physical stage presence were a tour de force. Having opened at the Franschoek literary festival, the show travelled to Grahamstown, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Orfeus
This reviewer is generally ambivalent about the creations of Brett Bailey and Third World Bunfight, but their rejuvenation of the ancient story of Orpheus and Eurydice was one of the highlights of the National Arts Festival. Rich in imaginative scope (and in song, courtesy of Congolese actor-musician Bebe Lueki) yet, at the same time, desolate in its setting – an abandoned quarry on the outskirts of Grahamstown – the production evoked contradictory descriptions: timeless yet contemporary, “African” but faithful to the “European” myth. Other Grahamstown highlights (although most of these productions toured elsewhere prior or subsequent to the festival) included Claire Watling in Kissed by Brel, Andrew Buckland’s Voetsak!, deaf/hearing integrated company From the Hip: Khulumakahle’s Gumbo, The Flatfoot Dance Company’s Three Men in a Square Space, Juliet Jenkins’ The Boy Who Fell From the Roof, Gaetan Schmidt in The Dog’s Bollocks, Tim Redpath in Prodigal, Scott Sparrow’s Performer’s Travel Guide and the slightly whacky but occasionally sublime dance collaboration, Fresh II.