HOW DO YOU hail a taxi in your city? Do you know where it will take you? Do you know how you should dress to do so and how you should pay the driver? It takes a very sophisticated level of skill to blend humour and horror in a way that catches even your most cynical audience member in the throat, paralysing the laughter and turning its essence into the kind of goose bumps that make them cry. This is the kind of depth of focus in Obett Motaung’s extraordinary revue about South African taxis that you can anticipate in A Streetcar Named Desiree, which is onstage at the State Theatre in Pretoria until 24 November 2024.

Lose your preconceived ideas that this work has something to do with Tennessee Williams’s almost eponymously named play. ‘Desiree’ here is a street name or a taxi code for a route or perhaps something much more predatory. And the narrative is rich with terms and handsigns and tropes central to the taxi industry in South Africa, and its complex social and economic history. If you are a regular taxi commuter, these idioms will ring loud and outrageous, hilarious and terrifying in your ear. If you’re not, listen to the discourse, even if you don’t speak all the languages in which this play is articulated. Taxiology in South Africa is a real thing, about micro-narratives and social protocol as well as about God, the universe and everything.

In 2008 Nwabiso Ngcukana was 25 years old. She wore a short skirt to a taxi rank in Noord Street, Johannesburg. She was brutally humiliated and assaulted by taxi drivers for this immodesty. It was a story which sent shockwaves through the country, and woke up people nationally to the horror that millions of “Nwabisos” have the potential of facing in this gender-based violent country of ours. Every day. In every taxi rank. All the time.

This story is threaded through Streetcar sinisterly and sequentially. With a storytelling device that recalls Jennie Reznek’s I turned away and she was gone, or The Cenotaph of Dan wa Moriri by Tony Miyambo, this work reflects a brilliant tale with bite, but also with song and hilarity about the taxi industry. From foolish CEOs who inherit the business, to the successful abuse of the old struggle cliches in a post-BEE generation, to a reflection on what if God himself was reincarnated on a taxi route and what he would say and who he would bless, the work comprises vignettes rich in splendour and irony but it is held together by overriding true and terrifying tales.

On a level, this play will take you by the heart and show a mirror of your world to you. On another, it splays out the Gender-Based Violence in our society with a directness that will leave your throat dry and your heart racing. On a third, it is so beautifully performed by each of the cast members who shape-shift and redefine themselves into a delicious reflection of society itself, it will make your head spin. And finally, as a collaborative affair – from the production design to the interface of audio-visual elements it is a work that is at once moral critique and at once clever spoof. Think Mike van Graan’s shticks. Think Woza Albert and its focus. But above all, think a fresh new generation of theatre makers, right here in the State Theatre. Don’t miss this one.

A Streetcar Named Desiree is written and directed by Obett Motaung. Featuring creative input by Nhlanhla Ngqaqu (sound), Hlomohang ‘Spider’ Mothetho (lighting), Sinenhlanhla Q Zwane (production), and Jurgen Meekel and Andrea Rolfes (audio visual), the work was mentored by Lara Foot Long under the aegis of the State Theatre Incubator programme. It is stage managed by Bandzile Matsenjwa and performed by Sibusiso Mkhize, Kamogelo Molatlhoe and Lucky Mqoboli, at the Sibusiso Khwinana Theatre, State Theatre Complex in central Pretoria until 24 November 2024.