AS A PERFORMER finds their presence onstage, a bit of magic is spilled out for all to see. It’s seldom that within the first couple of moments, that performer’s presence is cast over the work, like a spell, and holds you transfixed from the very moment she first moves until the lights drop at the end of the piece. That is what audiences experienced from Larissa Crafford-Lazarus in Jon Keevy’s A Girl Called Owl, staged briefly in Johannesburg and Pretoria earlier this year. If you missed it, make a date to be at Centurion Theatre, where it performs between 18 and 20 September.

With an energy that evokes Jenna Ortega, the performer who took on Wednesday Addams and turned her from an almost cameo into a series, and an ownership of a beautiful text not different from the presence that Cara Roberts casts over The King of Broken Things, Crafford-Lazarus becomes Olivia, the girl in question, in this 1980s period piece. The play first saw light of day in 2008 at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. It’s an intriguing coming of age piece that uses the kind of whimsical and unexpected metaphors that you might relate to the work of Mervyn Peake, at times.

And it is in this context, in the Overberg, a remote municipality of the Western Cape of South Africa, amid 1980s values with big hair, incipient bullying and tight school discipline, that Olivia – and her new best friend, Kay – is crafted. The play is thematically potent around the concept of being a bit of a outsider in a world dominated by structure, and whimsically leans hard on the sense of possibility for a curious child, in brand new experiences – both good and bad — a brand new place and a sense of how to fit in – or not – as the temperature of the social structures in which she finds herself dictates.

While the work’s denouement becomes a little rough and platitudinous as the girls reach teenagerhood, and some  of the magic is diluted, Crafford-Lazarus doesn’t lose a beat, and she updates her character with a nuance in her hairdo and a shift in her costume. In a sense, it is the play itself that digresses from the character’s boldness, established at the outset, and one yearns for a sense of structural balance from the beautify way in which it begins in relation to its abrupt ending.

Nevertheless, it is a very fine instrument to convey Crafford-Lazarus’s internal sense of character. She’s bold, she’s feisty, she’s convincing and she takes ownership of the work with a potency and a sense of vulnerability that will bring tears to your throat as you watch her.

• A Girl Called Owl is written by Jon Keevy and directed by Inge Crafford-Lazarus. Produced by Calaringe Productions, it features creative input by Inge Crafford-Lazarus (sound); Jak Brits (lighting and technical); and Calista Crafford-Lazarus (movement). It is performed by Larissa Crafford-Lazarus and enjoyed brief seasons earlier this year in Johannesburg and Pretoria. It will be staged at the Centurion Theatre, 18-20 September 2025.