You don’t come away complacent from this work. Is it assaultative? Absolutely. Relatable? 100%. You feel broken, body and soul as you emerge from it. You laugh with recognition at the dark tropes and you sweat with a personal dread at where this work may go, as you experience it.
From a giant toothbrush to a car tyre tutu, there’s a giraffe’s torso and a box from cremated ashes: the precious, the profane all in a beautiful conglomeration. There is respect both earnest and cynical paid to deceased mothers and representations of the horror of hate that leaves you queasy.
Soprano Louise Alder in the role of Zdenko/Zdenka lends ‘Arabella’ a feisty sense of character and her performance is one of the best reasons you should steel yourself to see this work. Her role is small, counterbalanced against that of the eponymous Arabella (performed by Rachel Willis-Sørensen), Zdenko’s elder sister.
With all of its apparent chaos, the story lines in Daniel Buckland’s Afropocalypse are crystal clear and the surreal topsy-turvy values articulated from the idea of an African apocalypse are held sacred and gorgeous. And not a little scary, at times. Be prepared to give tears and laughter on cue.
Du Plessis does more than observe the individual through the eyes and words of medical professionals with a Victorian mindset. He gazes at the crumbs left by reports and throwaway descriptions – all that remains of these individuals, who were invisible because they danced to a tune different from everyone else.
Gofaone Bodigelo is a Medea who is angry to the point of blindness, but she never loses her sense of being a woman wronged rather than a witch. It is, however, the chorus: 17-year-olds Natasha Dube and Malcom Moloi that leave you shattered by the sheer potency of their performances.
The question of a baby is answered severally as the play unfolds. It’s an answer concerning life, the universe and everything, rather than being about The Right Thing to Do at this time in a relationship. ‘Lungs’ takes us right through life’s trajectory, and it’s agonisingly relatable, whatever your age.
It’s a work sophisticated in its thinking, crude in its extrapolation. It speaks from the belly. While you’re guffawing with embarrassed recognition, the goosebumps on your skin rise; you feel feverish at the narrative underlying the words which subverts the dry face of statistics and shouts the ugly hypocritical truths.
‘So Long, Marianne’, a tribute to Marianne Faithfull is not only about the 1960s peaceniks or the proliferation of drug-users of the 1970s, it’s a piece threaded through with Shakespeare to make you weep, taking the voice of an angel to the depths of the demonic, with cigarettes and time.
Their limbs work like entities with autonomous opinions, and their muscles seem filled with mercury, yet the flow of dance is tight, from the core, and performed in satisfying unison. It’s dance that gives everything from Amapiano to House and beyond, gestural apostrophe and wit in all the right places.
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