SINCE THE TIME of Vincent van Gogh, the tragic life of an artist poorly understood, who makes great work, but dies alone, impoverished and unhappy, has slipped into exploitable romantic cliché. It takes very great skill and empathy to bring back the artist, their work and their pain without relying on tried and tested patterns of story-making. Ingrid: ‘n Vlam in die Sneeu is a beautiful piece that tells of the life, passion and ultimate fatal bewilderment of South African poet, Ingrid Jonker, who died at just 31 by her own hand. It is onstage at the Centurion Theatre, under the direction of Nadia Beukes, until 17 April 2025.
In many respects, Ingrid Jonker is like South Africa’s Sylvia Plath. A person who, in retrospect, holds a flag for manic depression, she loved with a full heart and fell hard when relationships exploded in her face. And there are interleaves and nuances that draw both from the collected letters between her and the writer André Brink, who was her lover for the last three years of her charmed and tumultuous life, and from her poems themselves.
But the work is not a heavy, self-conscious literary reflection on the value of the poems or an in-depth analysis of the relationship between two important writers. It is about Jonker’s quivering sense of humanity and fire as well as her visceral vulnerability. It is well made in terms of the fact that Jonker’s aloneness is the monodrama’s central focus.
Brink is present in the letters as a voice-over. Her daughter, Simone, is there by way of a teddy bear. Her husband, Piet Venter and another lover, Jack Cope, are both present as callers on the phone who interrupt her gossamer lines of thought, irrevocably. And then, there is the black dog, as much a recurrent irritant from the neighbour’s property as a metaphorical presence that has the power to blot out everything for her. But onstage, it is just Ingrid and her words, her wine, her complex articulation of love and her brutal experience of despair.
The letters are unabashed in their eroticism and honest in their give-and-take, but it is Jonker alone who is central to the piece. The gesture makes you wonder about the loneliness of being in the world, altogether.
The work itself needs, however, to get under your skin before you are completely seduced by it. It begins with a dramatic piano chord, a wig too pronounced and a poem sung with a sense of the maudlin that makes your heart sag a little. But as Lizelle Pike gets into the role of Jonker, a complex, brilliant and manic woman who was heir to disastrous relationships and committed suicide by drowning, she gives Jonker the dignity and depth that she warrants.
The seating in this theatre space is not deeply raked, and the stage is on the same level at the seats in the front row. This necessitates careful staging, which is not always the case in this work. When the performer sits on the floor, for instance, her actions fall out of eye-shot for much of the seated audience. It’s not a huge catastrophe because Pike’s voice and persona, the strength and beauty of the text and the unfolding narrative keeps you focused, but this isn’t a radio play, after all.
Set-wise, the roughly speckled backdrop feels unsophisticated, although the play of lighting that gives the telephone mounted on the wall a sinister presence, as it gives the barking dog in Jonker’s network of being alive an implacable relevance.
It’s a beautiful and significant work that sings with sincerity, but a tweak or two in its staging and mounting would have strengthened it considerably.
Ingrid: ‘n Vlam in die Sneeu is an Afrikaans-language play based on the love letters between Ingrid Jonker and Andre Brink, published by Penguin Random House in 2015. It is directed by Nadia Beukes and co-produced by Tiaan Kirsten-Lubbe and Lian Sachse. The production features creative input by Jak J Britz (set and stage adaptation); and Chanie Jonker (musical direction). It is performed by Lizelle Pike with Chanie Jonker on piano and is onstage at the Centurion Theatre in Lyttelton Manor until 17 April 2025.