Lombard unpeels character as he gets to core
THERE have been so many films, books and plays about the loss of innocence that the theme has become somewhat hoary if not hackneyed. However, this stage adaptation of Mark Behr’s novel takes the subject-matter into new territory with its brutal rawness. In it we witness not only the awakening of a sub-teen boy to the sheer nastiness of depraved adulthood; his unwelcome enlightenment extends to all the warped values inculcated into the lad by his middle-class, bigoted and racist family in 1970s South Africa.
The combination of Gideon Lombard’s inspired acting and Lara Bye’s equally inspired direction goes a long way to redeeming this nauseating drama, but the prevailing sensation on exiting the theatre is one of revulsion.
Spartan staging provides Lombard with the bare minimum of help in his brave monologue, although imaginative lighting and sound scape more than adequately fill any deficiencies in this regard. The show is all about the actor’s tour de force as he convincingly portrays not only the 11-year-old boy Marnus but also, with irreproachable finesse, all the characters involved in the child’s rite of passage.
Grim humour surfaces in the course of Lombard’s recital, mostly derived from the naivety of the boy’s beliefs and his absurd morality; from the paradox of a spontaneous sympathy for suffering persons of colour that can cheerfully write the latter off as sub-human unless they are Christians.
An obsession with his own member is the consequence of his new perspective on life, and the contrast is stark between the opening sequence (a boy’s natural curiosity about his anatomy) and the prolonged, minute scrutiny of his penis as an adult on active service many years later. A life so blighted is only redeemable by death, the ultimate liberator…