Wonderful new play shows there is still a great deal of healing to be done
AS SHAKESPEARE says in Hamlet, one of the purposes of the theatre and plays is “to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”.
During the apartheid era, theatre was a powerful force, with protest theatre reflecting the iniquities of the inhuman system.
With strict censorship in place, the Arts operated as a sort of escape valve, with the government largely ignoring what was being staged in places like the Space Theatre and the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town, and the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. At the same time, the cultural boycott prevented us from staging many of the best international plays. This had the effect of fast-tracking the creativity and careers of top South African playwrights of the time. Many protest plays travelled abroad and our playwrights, led by Athol Fugard, became highly regarded internationally.
Paul Slabolepszy is one of those writers who had his plays performed in the UK, the US, Germany, France, Australia, Sweden, Denmark and the Middle East. My 34-year director/playwright association with Paul started in 1982 at the Market Theatre with the groundbreaking play, Saturday Night at the Palace, and has stretched to nearly a score of stage, television and film productions.
Saturday Night at the Palace was one of the most successful anti-apartheid plays in the early 1980s, exposing as it did the viciousness of the racism of the time.
It was Paul’s first major success as a playwright, and it certainly put me on the map as a theatre director, with our production touring South Africa for two years before ending up in Ireland, Sweden and a sixweek season at the Old Vic Theatre in London.
The play established a style which has become a hallmark of Paul’s writing: quintessentially South African characters in situations that are initially highly amusing, before becoming gradually more serious, more moving and very often tragic. At the height of the apartheid era this recipe was exceptionally impactful, drawing thousands of people into the theatre with the expectation of great entertainment, yet having them leave with more than a little uneasiness about what they had witnessed and how it reflected on their lives in those troubled times.
Subsequent plays such as Boo to the Moon, Making Like America, Travelling Shots, Smallholding, The Eyes of their Whites (co-written with David Kramer) and Pale Natives, all of which I have had the pleasure of directing, had the same tragi-comic power, with indelible characters forcing us to look at ourselves and our country in a new light.
Paul Slabolepszy’s brilliance as a playwright is reflected in his ability to adapt to changing times. Few people want to go to ‘protest’ theatre these days. People want to be entertained, not reminded of the dark days of apartheid or the trials and tribulations of modern-day South Africa. How then, does a playwright continue to reflect our society and hold up a mirror to our society that is still relevant? Saturday Night at the Palace was Paul’s best and most important play, until his most recent play, Suddenly the Storm. Produced by the Market Theatre and currently playing at the Baxter Theatre, it has just won the annual Naledi award for best new South African play.
Saturday made a deep impression on a very wide range of South African citizens at a time when most forms of anti-apartheid protest were stifled by the government. Now, over 30 years later, we still regularly encounter people who tell us how the play affected them and has continued to live with them right up to the present day.
Another of Paul’s most successful plays, Pale Natives, was first staged around the time of the birth of our new democracy. It is a savagely funny and powerful story of five white men fearful of their future in the ‘new’ South Africa. We staged it again in 2015 with a new generation of actors and it was equally uproarious and powerful, whilst it had become an important reflection of the turbulent times during the birth of South African democracy.
Suddenly the Storm examines the after-effects of apartheid. The three characters in the play have all been shaped by that brutal era. Namhla Gumede, the black woman character who visits the married couple Dwayne and Shannel Combrink and changes their lives forever, was born on June 16, 1976.
On the same day Dwayne was in a police platoon that ‘rumbled into Soweto in the belly of a hippo’. Namhla has lived all her young life in exile and now finds herself unable to really call South Africa her home. Dwayne has had an upbringing that makes it impossible for him to follow his heart, and he rages against the country that made him chose between standing up for what really mattered, or standing back.
The play deals with how the wounds inflicted by apartheid on so many people from different backgrounds are still hurting today. Paul has an unerring knack of tapping into the psyche of ordinary people and, with Suddenly the Storm, he touches audiences who recognise that even 40 years on from June 16, 1976 – the day the Soweto uprising began – there is still a great deal of healing to be done. It does so through a wonderfully funny, riveting and moving story.
To this end the production premièred at the Market Theatre in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the student uprising and, auspiciously, our current season at the Baxter has also been planned to commemorate this day in South Africa’s political history. Importantly, is about hate, and it has a tragic ending. Suddenly the Storm is about love and it ends in hope.
I believe time will prove that Suddenly the Storm is as important a reflection of life in South Africa today as Saturday Night at the Palace was of its time. Suddenly the Storm runs at the Baxter Flipside Theatre until 8 July. Booking is through Computicket, Shoprite or Checkers.