State capture for stage
“Obviously, they are in some respects composite characters from my own experience of politics.”
However, Calland insists the main character “Uncle” is not Maharaj “but it’s a Mac-like character with other figures from the ANC thrown into the mix”.
“It’s an attempt … to personify all of the dilemmas, confusions and contradictions of the ANC into a character.”
He told Munusamy that “she’s sort of in the play, which made her laugh nervously”. The narrative arc of the “Journalist” character is that she is trying to redeem herself after she was “spat out” by the Zuma camp. “So, there is a similarity there.”
The Hulley-like character describes himself in the play as being more of a Quentin Tarantino type than a Shakespearian one: “Like Harvey Keitel, who’s doing the clean-up the business” in Pulp Fiction.
Calland attended a rehearsal early on. “Zane [Meas] plays the character almost as a comic figure as much as a menacing figure. It’s a lovely mixture of the two.”
The character “Virginia” is obviously Geoghegan, who was more than Bell’s sidekick, “actually probably in many ways a more important figure in the Bell Pottinger South Africa account”.
“And that’s entirely fictionalised, even though it’s based on who that person was.
“So, to answer your straightforward question, I guess only about 20% of the script is drawn from actual words said and the rest is fiction.”
Homann helped novice Calland to whittle down the script.
“One of the tussles I’ve had with Greg is that, in my experience, people in politics swear a lot. Often Greg, when he was reviewing the script, would cut quite a lot of the profanity.
“And he’d say, ‘You know, good news, we’ve managed to trim it by 2 000 words.’
I said, ‘Yeah, well, 1000 of those were ‘fuck’.’ But it became a sort of a running joke between us.
“I think Greg is not only a really fine director but he’s a writer in his own experience and skills set. And I trust him.”
Calland has been writing a column for the Mail & Guardian for 23 years. I wonder what is more effective — a piece of analysis in the newspaper or a play at the Market Theatre.
“One might now hope that a piece of art can last longer in a way,” he replies. “The old cliche about today’s newspapers being tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper, even with the internet, I think is largely true.
“Columns come and go and they’re quickly forgotten.
“Art is different. This may upset people in different ways. Or it may engage people in different ways. Maybe it will stimulate thinking and thought. I wait to see, with great interest, how the reaction is.”
Calland is mostly a sunny-side-up kind of political observer.
“The fact that Zuma was pushed out of power, that there has been some form of accountability and the Zondo Commission happened at all, and produced this compendium, this encyclopaedic analysis of what happened, is pretty extraordinary, actually.”
But South Africans forget quickly, probably because we are bombarded with scandal and shock.
“We’re moving on from it already. And maybe people are even bored of it: ‘Oh, God, Zuma, state capture. Don’t want to hear about that, read about that.’ And so, therefore, the only way that one can hope to penetrate that kind of tendency would be to make the point in a different way through drama or through art.
“That was my hope — that this play might capture, forgive the pun, some of that state capture stuff.”
We return to the person who nurtured Calland’s love for the theatre.
Last Saturday was the first preview of The Brothers, Number One and a Weekend Special.
Calland tells me it fell on his father’s birthday — he died in 2016 He would have turned 96.
“So, that was a coincidence, but a really nice one,” Calland says.
“Would he have been proud of you?” I ask him.
“I think he would have. I mean, he was always a bit confused by my career path. He was from that generation where you got educated, started a job and stuck with that job. And you stayed in one job, often one company, for your whole life.
“So, he couldn’t really understand the whole portfolio career thing of jumping from one thing to another. He found that quite mystifying.
“He once said to me, ‘When are you going to get a proper job?’ And by then I was a professor of law at UCT. And I was like, ‘Well, Dad, do you not think that’s kind of reasonably proper?’”
Calland pauses.
“I think he would be proud. I think he would be quite amazed. And he would be thrilled …”
runs until 12 May at the Market Theatre.