This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

13th October

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South Africa has a love-hate relationship with those who have left the country to “make it big” elsewhere. From Charlize Theron to Kevin Pietersen, they evoke extreme responses: from pride to disparagement and from envy to pity.

Nowadays, a South African living and working abroad is hardly interesting in itself – perhaps least of all in Britain, given the historical ties between South Africa and the United Kingdom. A South African in London is not unusual; indeed, following recent estimates, there may be anything between a hundred thousand and a million of them. Nevertheless, the months of October and November will see the culmination of (or, at any rate, the addition of another chapter to) a very unusual story about two London-based South Africans.  

While still at university in the 1970s, Eric Abraham worked as a journalist and anti-apartheid activist, exposing agents of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) and foiling their attempts to recruit student spies for the Nationalist government. He may have been the son of a senior officer in the South African navy, but he was dubbed a “troublesome child” by the apartheid authorities.

Abraham worked with Amnesty International and the BBC, founding the South African News Agency (SANA) in 1975 in response to “the need for an in-depth and factual information service” to “reflect the views and opinions” of black people in South Africa, because both the local press and international news agencies were too easily swayed by government propaganda. Towards the end of the turbulent year of 1976, he was banned and placed under house arrest; in 1977, he escaped via Botswana to England.

Thirty years and a significant change in vocation later, Abraham is a highly successful stage and screen producer. His career in the film industry spans the early Danny, the Champion of the World (starring Jeremy Irons, 1989), the Oscar-winning Kolya (Best Foreign Language Film, 1997) and the more recent Birthday Girl (starring Nicole Kidman, 2001). In between, he has produced award-winning British TV shows such as Dalziel and Pascoe. A few years ago, his Portobello production company entered the heady theatrical world of London’s West End.

Enter the second South African in this tale. David Lan trained as an actor in Cape Town and, after leaving for England in the 1970s, obtained a PhD in social anthropology. Lan fused this field of study with his talents as a writer and director, producing books, films and documentaries on various African countries while continuing his work in the theatre. Six years ago he was appointed as Artistic Director at London’s Young Vic, overseeing a £12.5 million renovation of the theatre complex.

So much for the resumes. What do these two have to do with South African theatre audiences today? The answer lies, ironically, with an Englishman who now lives – you guessed it – in South Africa. Mark Dornford-May is probably best known in South Africa as the director of U-Carmen eKhayelitsha, which (apart from winning the Golden Bear award for Best Film in Berlin a few years ago) demonstrated once and for all that opera is not anathema to Africa. He also happens to be married to Pauline Malefane, the “Diva of Khayelitsha”, whose reprisal of the role of Carmen on both stage and screen was widely hailed.

A veteran of the international theatre scene, Dornford-May had visited South Africa before and, in 2000, returned with a view to establishing an ensemble company by recruiting performers from across South Africa. After two thousand or so auditions, Dimpho Di Kopane (DDK – the name means “combined talents” in Sotho) was formed. Apart from Carmen, DDK under Dornford-May’s direction has created shows like Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries, a recreation of the medieval mystery play format that sold out for months on end in London and toured South Africa to some acclaim. The company’s engagement with religious subject matter continued in last year’s Son of Man, a film version of the Gospels set in contemporary Africa, which garnered the Best Feature Award at LA’s Pan American Film Festival.

Dornford-May and Malefane, bringing the recipe that worked so well with DDK, have joined forces with Abraham and Lan (under the banner Isango/Portobello) in a project that, like its predecessors, promises to straddle the artistic and cultural divides between Europe and Africa. Malefane is undoubtedly the star, but once again the cast has been recruited through open auditions. Many of them live in the less affluent areas of Cape Town – such as Athlone, where they have been rehearsing.

Charles Dickens’s classic novel A Christmas Carol has been reworked many times on stage and screen over the years, but the Isango/Portobello production of IKrismas Kherol will be more than a little different to its predecessors. The show, which is currently running at Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre, is a musical version of Dickens’s tale set in a contemporary South African township. Choral conductor Nolufefe Mtshabe joined Malefane and youngsters Mandisi Dyantyis and Mbali Kgosodintsi to craft the original music and adapt the script. The same team has put together The Magic Flute/Impempe Yomlingo, a multilingual local rendering of Mozart’s famous opera, complete with marimbas and African percussion. Impempe Yomlingo will also run for three weeks in October, before both productions head off to London for a season at the Young Vic.

I asked Abraham about the reception he anticipates for A Christmas Carol and The Magic Flute in London. “It's bad luck to anticipate the reception of plays and films,” he reminds me, “but if The Mysteries is anything to go by the chances are they’ll love Carol and Flute. London audiences aren’t particularly predisposed to works outside the English language. Quite the contrary, one has to work hard to overcome considerable cultural and probably racial prejudice; in addition, there is no long-standing tradition of theatre-going among London’s ‘ethnic’ communities. So extraordinary talent, which we have, imaginative marketing and publicity, and outstanding reviews are the only ways of achieving success for Flute and Carol. It also helps that they both are instantly recognisable works.”

They are, admittedly, less instantly recognisable to your average South African. Nevertheless, Abraham affirms their universality: “Enduring literature and cultural works do not belong to one national or ethnic group to the exclusion of others. I have produced films in Czech and Russian in addition to English. The works stand or fall on their own merit. Of course, they resonate slightly differently to the group from which they come: indeed, my experience is that the more rooted a play or film is in its origin, the more universal it is.”

Speaking of origins, do Lan and Abraham view their role as expatriate South Africans as problematic? There is, after all, a history of hyper-sensitivity in South Africa when it comes to a sense of belonging in the country or staking a cultural-artistic claim in it. Abraham resists the “expat” tag: “I do not see myself as an expatriate South African or a Briton. South Africa left an indelible mark on my soul and Britain generously offered me shelter in exile.” If this sounds romantic, one need only think back to the conditions of his experiences under apartheid  – the “indelible mark” was one of the scars of the struggle. Abrahams is “disturbed by the air-brushing out of the contributions a small number of white people like Helen Joseph and Helen Suzman made to the downfall of apartheid. It is irresponsible of those in government to be playing politics with race in a country as traumatised and volatile as this one. Apartheid brutalised generations of all racial groups for the rest of their lives.”

It is just possible, however, that productions like iKrismas Kherol and Impempe Yomlingo can counteract that legacy. If so, the unlikely story that has brought them about is likely to become more familiar to South African and British audiences.

To read a review of the productions, click here.