Dark comedy in a smartphone-obsessed world
Last week I had the privilege of watching a dress rehearsal for RMB Starlight Classics — a South African arts fixture that, as readers of this column will know, I can’t recommend highly enough. I shared the occasion with a few thousand other people; such is the renown of Starlight Classics that even tickets to dress rehearsals are highly prized.
Of course, there were the usual musical thrills, the genre crossover magic, the singing talent, the big orchestra, the lights, and bells and whistles. But this being a dress rehearsal, there were also a handful of glitches. A few seconds of dead air here and there. Famous MCs fluffing their lines. A video feed cutting out.
These are the little things ironed out for the main event, a reminder of the thousands of adjustments, fixes, artistic flourishes and logistical flexes that go into staging a concert on the scale of Starlight Classics — never mind the months of unseen labour and preparation that precede the event. The privilege, therefore, lies in getting just a glimpse into the enormity of the process that results in such a slick product.
Documentaries showing actors in the rehearsal room, artists in studio or musicians picking out a new tune tend to depict the 1% inspiration. We don’t see much of the 99% perspiration: the tedium, repetition and time-wasting, the artists being human, experimental and error-prone.
I am one of those people who loves going behind-thescenes, hoping to gain some insight into the mysteries and mundanities of creative practice. Others prefer not to know how the effect is achieved.
Either way, the slippery relationship between illusion and reality — between spectacle and mechanism — is ultimately a source of pleasure in the arts. But this is not the case when it comes to “real” life; on the contrary, the anxiety caused by the increasingly imperceptible difference between illusion and reality is a defining feature of our age.
We know the damage that can be done through a combination of fake news and algorithmic accuracy. Panic about the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes seems justified.
An equally pernicious phenomenon, however, is one with which we are all familiar: the inconsistent connection between what actually happens in our daily lives and the parallel world inhabited by our virtual selves on social media.
This is the terrain explored by Rosalind Butler’s new play Expelled, which is onstage at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg until the end of March.
Directed by Craig Freimond, it centres on a scandal at an elite SA boys’ school: a viral video capturing the toxic masculinity of a “boys will be boys” prank.
Alex (Nicolas Hattingh) is one of those caught on camera, and the disciplinary procedure that follows exposes the faultlines in his not-so-happy family. Mother Lou (Charmaine Weir-Smith) spends hours on Facebook distracting herself from what threatens to become a purposeless life; father Rich (Antony Coleman) is in desperate pursuit of the deal that will secure his family’s wealth and give him the social status that has eluded him.
Our sympathy for Alex fluctuates. The perennial question of the extent to which bad teenage behaviour can be forgiven, or at least ascribed to adolescent folly, is complicated by systemic factors (the sexism and misogyny of a boys’ school environment) and by personal foibles (Alex’s parents mean well but they have lost their way).
The world outside the domestic space intrudes via smartphone and laptop screens, as conversations with the headmaster (Graham Hopkins) and Alex’s on-off girlfriend Cass (Amelia Smith) are projected onto the set. The high production values that SA audiences have come to expect from producers How Now Brown Cow are on display again here.
Expelled is billed as a “dark comedy”. While there are numerous moments of levity, the scenario is a grim one. We come close to a comic resolution when the moment of crisis appears to be diffused. Then reality, “truth”, imposes itself again: things are far worse at the school than the viral video seemed to convey.
We are left with tragedy in a minor key for the family whose fortunes we have followed, as the final tableau portrays them atomised and alone in the darkness, mesmerised by their smartphone screens.
IT CENTRES ON A SCANDAL AT A BOYS’ SCHOOL: A VIDEO CAPTURING THE TOXIC MASCULINITY OF A ‘ BOYS WILL BE BOYS’ PRANK