‘Woza Albert!’ is back –and even better
About 38 years after its first staging, it has all its original energy and new relevance
MBONGENI Ngema and Percy Mtwa created Woza Albert! with the late Barney Simon, co-founder of the Market Theatre in Johannesburg.
The play was first staged in 1981 at the Market. Direction of this touring revival production is by Christopher John. The tour began last year at Durban’s Playhouse. Lighting is by Mannie Manim, it’s extraordinary. He co-founded the Market with Simon and created the original lighting plot in 1981.
Woza Albert! 2019 is a master-class in physical theatre – dripping with irony and laugh-out-loud mirth.
It was an honour and privilege to see Ngema and Mtwa re-visit this seminal play which transcends being a period piece and reverberates loudly – brutally – in our contemporary landscape which is riddled with ruptures and fissures.
In Woza Albert!, despairing of what is going around them, the protagonists ask: “What country is this?”, “What of the women without men, children without fathers?” Same but different in 2019. Then there were the so-called homelands and corruption. And now: corruption and disempowering forces. And who are you going to call amid the despair?
In Woza Albert! Morena (Christ or a divine king) is being cited as the saviour and change agent.
Even for non-believers, he brings hope and they will heed his call. They may heckle and laugh, but who knows, maybe he will be able to enable dead heroes to rise up (“woza” means rise) and redeem those who are shackled.
Each scene is a capsule of excellence, with Ngema and Mtwa conjuring up characters and situations through a dazzling use of physical comedy.
Gesture and movement is stripped down to an essence. The clank of train wheels. The whistle of a train. The lip-smacking wonder of a child. The clowning is absurd – hilarious and heart-wrenching.
On the night that I saw the play, people in the audience screamed in appreciation as these two masterful artists walked on to the stage.
The whooping went on throughout. Many of those present in the audience were not born in the ’80s when the play was staged.
But they knew the words and chanted along with the performers and sang the songs.
As young artists, Ngema and Mtwa honed the characters, situations and motifs from their own lives and their generation – of young black men in apartheid South Africa in the ’80s.
They were stopped for not having a “pass” or having the wrong document or just because a police person felt like a diversion, and the law allowed it.
Nearly 38 years later and they are still calling out: “What country is this?” Because of the passage of time (they are 38 years older than in 1981), for me there is a sense of men (as opposed to the young men they were) who inhabit the space and who have the distance to look back.
Their energy never lets down. Thirty eight years has not blunted their physical prowess on stage.
The emotional range – of longing, loss, wariness – is what sets this Woza Albert! above the other productions I have seen with young artists. And it’s not just any veteran performers.
It is the original performers who were there as young artists – calling out in theatre for their lives.
It was Theatre of Witness.
In 2019, they are calling again – with unbridled energy and exquisite artistry.
Woza Albert! is on at the Baxter’s Flipside until March 2, 7.30pm.Tickets are R100-R195. Book at Webtickets.