FOREPLAY To 13 June.
London.
FOREPLAY
by Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom.
Theatre Royal Stratford East To 13 June 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 13 June 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr No interval.
TICKETS: 020 8534 0310.
www.stratfordeast.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 May.
Highly charged South African sexual roundabout.
South African State Theatre arrives with a loose – very loose – adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s sexual carousel La Ronde. Instead of the rituals and repressions of late 19th-century Vienna Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom’s version brings the sweat and violence of South African streets. It opens with what seems a race, till a last minute swing of angle reveals it as a chase ending in a shooting.
Audiences enter to the loud calls of brassy whores, while pimps and others hang lazily around. Varieties of sexual lust seep through characters from the brazen prostitute, practised in getting money, to the preacher’s wife wrapped tight in respectable clothes, their blatant red hinting at the strength of desire which will soon have her peeling them away.
Grootboom interrupts his sexual roundabout – Schnitzler has one character from each scene proceeding to another encounter in the next – for a couple of monologues (shorter ones turn up with inner revelations at moments of sexual activity). One shows the hypocrisy of a preacher, the other the sufferings of a schoolgirl taking part in a drama-therapy session.
The preacher is an easy target, but the girl’s revelations, coming through her initial assertions that life’s been through-and-through happy, are shocking. And while there’s plenty of comedy along the way, there’s a sinister feel to the authority figures – preacher, playmaker - using their position to prey on young women. Most shocking of all is the politician who launches a vicious assault on the prostitute, in the same place and using the same techniques applied to him as an opposition figure during the apartheid years.
It’s hardly subtle, and it’s basic enough in language. But Grootboom’s strength, in his play and this vividly acted production, lies in the directness and relentlessness; scene-changes under the end of scenes provide non-stop momentum, projections show characters and subtitle scenes that have just begun with a line of upcoming dialogue. Then there's the representation of sex by bubble-gum; sinister, when a piece is unwrapped for the girl being introduced to sex; elsewhere capturing the casual insolence, the mix of dilating desire and subsequent self-satisfaction of these characters.
Prostitute: Excellentia Mokoena.
Barmaid/Schoolgirl/Preacher’s Wife/Actress: Kokesto Mojela.
Spoilt Young Man/Playmaker: Mandla Gaduka.
Soldier/Preacher: Sello Zikalala.
Politician: Boitumelo Shisana.
Director: Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom.
Designer: Wilhelm Disbergen.
Choreographer: Israel Bereta.
2009-05-31 16:52:27