Audiences Uysed as Evita educates a new generation
CELEBRATING satire, the National Arts Festival selected Pieter-Dirk Uys in this, his 70th year, as the inaugural featured arts icon of the year. “It only took 7 000 shows,” says the man who easily speaks his mind.
He also flippantly suggests they could have done a better job of the Festival Magazine cover, which features Tannie Evita and Zuma.
“Zuma? They tell me it’s a puppet,” he says, mockingly, from the Guy Butler stage or the “People’s Theatre”, as he has dubbed it.
“Why didn’t they ask Brett Murray to draw it?” he asks with a devilish twinkle. “He would have done a better job.”
His alter egos also took a few swipes, with Bambi Keller man (Evita’s estranged sister) complaining about the afternoon slot her Never Too Naked, has been assigned.
But this was his (and the two sisters’) chance to look back as each headlined their own act. It was a nostalgic trip with Tannie Evita, first up in A Part Hate, A Part Love.
There’s no doubt about her superior status. She’s the crowd favourite and packed the auditorium to the rafters with every wink applauded. She is loved across the board.
“She’s absolutely one of my highlights,” says even 20-something photographer Nokuthula Mbatha, who made her first acquaintance with the formidable dame.
There have been some groans about more serious issues to be tackled than heckling a woman whose sell-by date might have come and gone.
But not when you sit in the midst of that large crowd who are loving every moment, including Tannie Evita’s new, nappied Malema, “whom I found in the alley behind Luthuli House”, purrs the paragon of political manipulation. Then she whips off the wig and slips out of her high heels as Uys manoeuvres easily from Evita to Botha.
“I even look like him now,” he says, wiggling his tongue in the familiar snake-like impersonation.
They may know every move and recognise much of the satire, but his alter egos have them eating out of their hands – to the last crumb.
The following afternoon, it was the turn of Baby Swanepoel – aka Bambi Keller man – smooching through some Kurt Weil/Bertolt Brecht and a subversion of a collection of FAK songs, masterfully accompanied by Godfrey Johnson.
“In Afrikaans it means the Federation of Afrikaans Cultural Organisations, but in English it’s something completely different and much more fun,” says the blonde crooner.
It was a much darker and more adult show, so Bambi’s irritation with the after noon timing was understandable – it meant a smaller crowd.
“I won’t keep you longer than the prescribed 75 minutes. You won’t miss your Noddy,” she cooed.
She didn’t hold back with thoughts like “we got the best gover nment money could buy” and urging her audience that even better than “freedom of expression” was “freedom to laugh”. And they did – joyously.
A few hours later, Pieter-Dirk Uys, dressed in his familiar dark casual attire, pulled up a bar stool.
If, like the official festival programme indicated, audiences were wondering if he was going to slay his audience with satire “from Amandla to Nkandla”, it was not to be.
This was Uys sharing his earliest memories, including the bond bro- ken between father and son, shattered by the suicide of his mother, and his performing family, while he was on the side playing with his Dinky Toys or under the blankets listening to Springbok Radio.
This was familiar territory to those of us following him through the years, but not for this audience. They walked his long road sweetly, were told how his audience laughed at every swear word during those heavy, censored days – “South Africans love to laugh at the word poep!” – and were happy to go over time for an extra tale.
Uys on stage as his fictional Evita or Bambi can probably keep going until they need walkers, but his adoring audience is less forgiving when it comes to his plays.
They left the theatre in droves at most of the performances of African Times, and although he had many explanations in the festival newspa- per about the problems, nothing could hide that the script was not his best.
MacBheki (a homegrown version of the Scottish play and described as a farce to be reckoned with) was on the button as he lashed out, specifically at the Aids debacle during Thabo Mbeki’s reign. It played to mixed audiences young and old, with people rolling in the aisles.
In sharp contrast, the script for African Times felt tired and clichéd, with none of the sharp wit that is needed when you want to unravel and check the craziness of power.
The cast also didn’t step up, but that might have been the result of the late cuts that could upset anyone’s rhythm and natural flow.
It was an unhappy spectacle and one that would not have favoured a different result, even if uncut.
The festival comes to a close tomorrow.