SIZWE BANSI IS DEAD. To 26 May.

London

SIZWE BANSI IS DEAD
by Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona French adaptation by Marie-Helene Estienne

Barbican Theatre (Pit) To 26 May 2007
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed 2.30pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 May 2007

Excels in every quality but one.
Along with The Island, Sizwe Bansi is Dead exploded onto the Royal Court stage in 1974. As The Island came out of Antigone, Sizwe reflects, less directly, in apartheid South African terms Brecht’s Man is Man, in which a soldier is given an entirely new identity.

In this play’s South Africa who a person is, defined in liberal humanistic terms by their name (thus, The Crucible’s John Proctor insists on the significance of his name), is less important than what his documents say. The pass every Black South African had to carry by White-ordained law defines who its bearer is.

When Sizwe Bansi doesn’t want to be set back to the Township named on his pass, he has to change his identity. The story of how, with the help of a corpse and some trickery with the dead man’s ID, he achieves this forms a major part of the play.

That comes after an opening monologue in which photographer Styles explains how he left the giant Ford South Africa factory to find individuality by setting up his solo business. Sizwe tells Styles his story; Styles just speaks to us.

Simplicity itself, yet given life by the theatrical energy of John Kani and Winston Ntshona in the premiere and by Habib Dembele’s Styles and Pitcho Womba Konga’s Sizwe for Peter Brook’s production (in French, with English supertitles), from his Paris-based Theatre des Bouffes du Nord. Dembele’s slight figure is miraculously fluid as he engages the audience like acquaintances and runs through preparations for Henry Ford Junior visiting the South African car plant.

Nimble and precise, he creates instant flashback cameos of factory-cleaning, the picture of the South African white boss too fat to fit through a doorframe or the disrespectful terms in which he translates the boss’s words into the workers’ language. He’s counterpointed by the larger-framed, slower-witted Sizwe, keeping up with city ways, happily beaming with his pipe when the system doesn’t cause him problems.

All this elegant, sparely-staged production lacks is the context of raw experience that lay behind the first actors’ performances. But that’s hardly something to regret.

Styles/Buntu: Habib Dembele
Sizwe Bansi: Pitcho Womba Konga

Director: Peter Brook
Designer: Abdou Ouologuem
Lighting: Philippe Vialatte

2007-05-20 12:26:00