RADIO DRAMA REVIEW: DIE LYK.

“OH my dear boy, what shall we do?” Trudie (Elzabe Zietsman) asks her son Francois (Cobus Venter). Photograph by Eloise Cupido and Mari Molefe van Heerden.

WHAT DO YOU do when you kill your impossibly annoying husband in error? This is the quandary that besieges Trudie (Elzabe Zietsman) in this week’s Afrikaans-language radio drama, by Karin du Toit, which debuts tonight, 11 June, at 8pm on Radio Sonder Grense. This is not a serious CSO/Squad Cars kinda yarn, but rather a take on a complicated but deeply wise mix between Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet that will keep you laughing at every turn in this cleverly constructed work that features several stings in its flexed tail.

With Eloise Cupido as the pragmatic maid Lydia, who sparks dead pan hilarity, the work is peppered with hairpin bends which will keep you as surprised as the characters in the story themselves. And it brings together the final tragic scene of Shakespeare’s most popular love story with a feminist twist, a teaspoon of the contemporary plight of women married to bullies, a half a cup of clichés from classic thrillers and a whole bunch of innuendoes which will make you laugh out loud in the face of the Grim Reaper who crouches in the wings, all the time.

You will think of the scene involving the John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson characters in Pulp Fiction where they are confronted with the problem of a seriously messy back seat of a sedan and a wife who returns from work in a few hours, as Trudie and her son Francois (Cobus Venter) make hasty and deliciously flawed plans.

It’s not only a tale of murder most foul, but a gloss on society, the relentlessness of prying neighbours and a mother and son with scant savvy in the name of terrible crime. It’s an hour and a bit of pure radio theatre joy: Zietsman commands the situation with characteristic hysteria and charm, fierceness and matter-of-fact courage that will almost make you fall off your chair. Don’t miss this one, it’s top class.

• Die Lyk (The corpse) is written by Karin du Toit. Directed by Renske Jacobs, and featuring technical input by Bongi Thomas and Evert Snyman Jr, it is performed by Eloise Cupido, David Louw, Hannes Müller, Ria Smit, Mari Molefe van Heerden, Cobus Venter and Elzabe Zietsman. It broadcasts on RSG on 11 June 2020 at 8pm, will be broadcast again in Deurnag, the station’s all night programme, on Monday 15 June May 2020 at 1am and is available on podcast through the radio station’s website: rsg.co.za