A Happy New Year with Kramer
THE signature vellies are there and the bowler hat atop his head, with characteristic feather attached to the band.
Sitting perched at a bar table in the Fugard Theatre’s intimate foyer, David Kramer is, as always, the amazing, the legendary, theatre maker, musician, singer and director.
The man is a familiar figure around town – he loves to walk on Camps Bay beach (close to where he lives), is a regular film-goer at the Labia and is frequently spotted at any number of theatres, watching, observing and digesting other creatives’ work.
We meet to talk in retrospect about his triumphant Langarm, which has been so popular that the show has been extended. And to discuss Happy New Year, his adaptation of the hit two-hander
play Midsummer (A Play With
Songs), by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre. He’s been in the business of entertaining people in one way or another for 48 years with a considerable portfolio of songs and productions, and he smiles a gentle smile when I quiz him about his remarkable legacy and never-ending passion.
Using his own background in the Boland town of Worcester, he would often put the spotlight on these little towns – and with his gritty realism coupled with a dark sense of humour, he would get his message across.
It’s not long before the name Taliep Petersen crops up – in 1986 Petersen and Kramer began collaborating on their first musical project District Six (D6).
His fascination and connection with District Six grew and grew and last year another box office success and, currently still showing at the Fugard, is Langarm – set in D6 and portraying the tragedy of forced removals there.
It was due to his friend in London – Nicholas Kent – that
Happy New Year came about – Kent is the artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre where some of Kramer’s plays were staged, and he wanted Kramer to adapt the play for Cape Town audiences.
In true Kramer style it appears he has done a splendid job of fitting the city to the play.
In the play, high-flying divorce lawyer Lee-André meets car salesman and small-time criminal Dan in a bar one midsummer’s night when the married man she’s been seeing cancels their date. He’s totally not her type, but when the two disparate souls come together, a wild weekend of alcohol-infused adventure and abandon ensues. They discover they are not so different after all, and that maybe there are second chances at life – and love. “It’s very appealing and also easy to perform – a love story between two unlikely people,” says Kramer.
The couple who play the roles, Bianca Flanders and Dean Balie, are romantically linked in real life, making it all the more poignant and the chemistry on stage absolutely real.
“It’s been great rethinking this in a new setting and with the new actors. Dean plays a man in the twilight zone – someone who did well at school but does favours for the wrong people. But he and Lee-André have a very sweet relationship.”
Happy New Year runs from February19 until March16 at the Fugard Studio. Tickets can be booked through The Fugard Theatre.