WHAT IS REAL entertainment? Forget the shamelessly syrupy and pretty, it’s something that gnaws at your inner fibre without your quite being able to escape its clutches, and yet, it leaves you with a grin on your face and hope in your sense of the future. Elzabé Zietsman’s recent countrywide tour of her one-woman-and-her-accompanying-pianist show, Vier Panado’s en ‘n Chardonnay has reached closure, but the melody and pungency of it lingers, like a punch in the vitals, and when next you see a fixture with her name, cancel everything else and make sure you see it. As many times as you can.

Hers is a voice which can sweeten and fill any space with a muscularity that makes your pulse quicken. Conjoined with a stage presence that evokes the legendary and very candid Maggie Smith at her most scathing rolled together with Evita Bezuidenhout’s immoral sister Bambi Kellermann, with a peppering of Bertolt Brecht’s Pirate Jenny tossed into the mix, Zietsman is a charge of dynamite. Hers is a repertoire that mixes song and true stories of her own life into a fabric delicious with gems and dark with the horror of what human beings are capable of, when they are hidden behind computer screens and phones.

Her songs are a 2024 equivalent of witty capitalist anthems of the ilk Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz and Johannes Kerkorrel’s BMW, in its hilarious and horrible juxtapositioning of South Africa’s haves and have-nots, using the vehicle of a character, ‘Esmeralda’ who is in a ‘toestand’.

Now in her sixties and not afraid to take hold of the world with both hands, her revue comprises a mêlée of songs which she has penned and others she has moulded to fit South Africa’s unique levels of hypocrisy, hatred and hope, sometimes all in the same breath. She sings with Tony Bentel on the piano in more ways than just literally, though that she does too. In his spangly red tails and short shorts, he fits the beautifully burlesque tones of the work without being silly or crude, but engaging with the energy that pianistically balances tragedy and fury with humour to make your belly rattle.

Zietsman is the kind of voice that South Africans, oft with their heads shoved deep into the earth, or better still, up their own bums, need to hear. She’s political without being tiresome or clichéd, unafraid to name the scammer that forced her to change everything in her life, because her heart is soft and her priorities clear; and to shame the hateful rapey culture of young male Afrikanerdom. She knows who she is and is unafraid to embrace it all.

This is a cabaret that will loosen up your head as it punches you hard in the gut. It’s unforgettable stuff that skitters along the edge of being simultaneously ugly and magnificent, desperately sad and hilarious in a way that will remind you what it feels like to really be alive.  

• Vier Panado’s en ‘n Chardonnay is directed by Johann Slabbert. Evolved collaboratively between Slabbert with Tony Bentel on keyboard and Elzabé Zietsman on vocals in Afrikaans and English with spots of German and French, it has performed all over the country, including most recently, a season at Gramadoelas at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, and the Fairtree Atterbury Theatre in Pretoria.