"Long Street, Cape Town, after midnight, no boundaries exist, and anything can happen. It's a place rich in history, where dreams can come true or be brutally shattered. This is theatre based on reality - raw, dangerous and alive."
I LOVED IT FOR SO MANY REASONS! I don't even know how to begin!
The Baxter Theatre Centre is located at Cape Town University... Can I fill out an application now? I would never leave that place if I didn't have to. Please accept me to your school!!! I don't know what I would study or do, but please take me!
The first thing that was amazing about the play is that we were seeing a South African play, performed by South African actors in South Africa. That was unreal...
In his Director's Note, veteran SA director/actor, Nicky Rebelo chose to quote Herman Charles Bosman. Bosman said a lot of incredible things that helped Rebelo in creating this play (he and the actors created it by spending two straight weeks at Long Street), but the quote I liked the best was "Your material is humanity, reality, life. Plot is of minor importance, the characters, the feeling for place, the knowledge of life, truth to life is the only truth that matters... The most creative way of devising stories is to bring characters to life, set them in motion and then follow them into action." This is clearly what Rebelo and his cast set out to do.
The theatre was Schubert-esque. We were right on top of the stage, which was decorated with detailed matte paintings of Long Street monuments and fluorescent lights. We have actually visited Long Street during our stay here, so I recognized some of their set design (at one point in the play, they talked about Mama Africa, where we went earlier this week).
The play followed six people and their adventures on Long Street. It was told mostly through short vignettes, but also short scenes involving no more than two cast members at a time. Mia, played by Natasha Dryden, was my favorite. She has the most fully-developed arc, where she matured from a young and wild party girl to a woman trying to figure life out. Sizwe, played by Thando Doni, was a sweet, black man looking for love from an idealised, white tourist. Doni was so charming that you couldn't help but love Sizwe, who ended up in pink jeans and green converse at the end of the play. Antonio Fisher deserves some type of an award for his portrayal of gay bartender, Fabian; anyone who can say some of the things he had to say with a nun in plain sight without breaking character is a star. DJ Catherine, played by Daneel van der Walt, was another favorite of mine and the group's. Jasmine, played by Riana Alfreds, needed work. Alfreds' work was great, but the character was ambiguous and left me confused for the most part. I was never entirely sure what this woman was doing on Long Street... Thami Mbongo played perpetually drunk businessman, Duma. I wish I could see Mbongo in something else, because it is obvious that he is superb and his resume is packed. Duma was the least developed character; he would stumble on stage, philosophize with a glass in his hand and leave, he never went anywhere. I wanted to see more from Duma, but I never got it.
I think that there is still space to reconfigure and workshop the play, due to the fact that some characters fell flat compared to the more richly developed characters. You needed all six of the characters to get the real flavor of Long Street, but not every character felt necessary to the play.
One thing that worried me the whole time was how Sister John Marie felt about the language and content (I really cannot believe that I brought a nun to THAT show) but at the end of the night, she assured me that, overall, it was a real treat.
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