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Auditioning Angels

REVIEWS OF AUDITIONING ANGELS IN JOHANNESBURG — JULY 2003

Not just facts, hard truths

– Adrienne Sichel, The Star, 11 July 2003

When you sit on one of those spanking new Studio Theatre seats, you will be mightily entertained by Pieter-Dirk Uys's first play in 11 years. But don't get too comfortable: this master storyteller is auditioning you as a human being.

It takes a great leap of creativity to transfer searing issues like the plight of Aids babies and child rape to the stage without bludgeoning audiences with facts and stereotypes.

Uys, the playwright, is too crafty to fall into that trap, precisely because he knows his craft and the socio-political terrain he continues to prowl as an acerbic activist.

As a result, with Auditioning Angels set in a vast nameless yet familiar South African hospital, Pieter Toerien's new theatre opens with an artistic wail and not a theatrical whimper. Less melodramatic than it was at its first performance in Grahamstown, this production, securely directed with great insight by Blaise Koch, offers snappy writing fleshed out by five sterling actors.

They bring to life the characters whose flaws make them deeply human and their personal histories so unpredictable. And so quintessentially South African post-1994.

Stylistically, the script parodies soap opera - represented by a dysfunctional TV set which spews out lurid snatches of a hospital tearjerker and lotto numbers - with reality. Many of the situations and lines are very funny, but the humour draws emotional and intellectual blood. Racism, corruption and pornography are all fair game.

In the unravelling of the story of the Nathan family - the tarnished exile father Gerald Nathan, played with gravelly gravitas by Clive Scott; his corporate go-getter daughter Gloria (Jo da Silva), her business partner Majuba (Thoko Ntshinga) and seriously damaged brother Matthew (Paul du Toit) - another scenario unfolds. Nurse Tessie Bredenkamp, created with terrific warmth and depth by Nandi Nyembe, cuts through the bureaucratic nightmare and becomes a matriarch to the desperate and the dying.

Depending how cynical you are, the ending either wallows in fantasy or provides a beam of hope as at least one grizzled citizen transforms into a touching angel. That could include you.

The Studio Theatre was officially opened by Satour CEO Cheryl Carolus who confessed that "theatre will always be a special passion of mine".

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Auditioning Angels

– Mary Jordan, Business Day, 11 July 2003

Opening Pieter Toerien's new Studio Theatre at Montecasino, is AUDITIONING ANGELS, the first play by Pieter-Dirk Uys since 1991. He is quite adamant that Evita Bezuidenhout would not go anywhere near the production. "She'd be disgusted by it," he says.

>Our sparkling satirist has written a work completely devoid of sentiment. Uys presents life as it is. No matter how heart-wrenching the situation, he walks right into it and is brutally nonchalant. Yet into the aridity of hospital surroundings he shoehorns a political agenda that is passionate in its crusade. Here is a series of gut-wrenching dilemmas, the sort on which great dramas have been built.

Director Blaise Koch has gone in for a bit of old-fashioned typecasting, so the actors really look like the characters they are supposed to be playing. It adds some realism to the story line, bringing everything vividly to life. A girl child has been molested. her mother, Gloria Nathan (Jo da Silva) is wracked by painful intensity as she awaits the results of intrusive tests. In a tortured portrait of self-doubt, Da Silva, using a weft of small strokes, defines the fragility of single parenthood, those serious miscalculations of career choices that leave a child unprotected and to its own devices.

The extraordinary period charm and flavour of Clive Scott playing the ANC struggle veteran, Gerald Nathan, disguises innumerable layers of fakery. With studied and smooth sophistication, he discusses the problems facing the electorate, skilfully adapting to altered realities and fresh possibilities. His sin and his flaw has been to love his son Matthew (Paul du Toit) beyond ambition, and there is a moment of magnificent tension when Scott interprets that affection.

Imparting purpose and depth to the messianic tones of the script, Thoko Ntshinga and Nandi Nyembe are completely pragmatic as they do their bit to quell the facile histrionics of a family in pain and face up to the lunatic cruelty of child rapists. They are both touching and dignified as they face stark choices head-on.

The climax is unsettling and savage, mind-numbing an d dark. This is no sugar-spun comedy but a compelling and violent appraisal of relationships, vocation and HIV/AIDS.

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Funny, poignant and thought-provoking theatre with a twist in its tale

– Arja Salafranca, Sunday Independent, 13 July 2003

The rape of an eight-year-old girl becomes the catalyst for family drama and healing in Pieter-Dirk Uys's first new play since 1991.

An eight-year-old girl is raped. While her blood is being tested for the HI virus, members of her family wait around in a disused hospital room. But this is not a play about rape, although the incident serves as the catalyst for the action. Uys packs comedy and pathos into what is a play about many things: family wounds, and misunderstandings, allegiances, the old South Africa, the new South Africa, a caring nurse, and mostly, deep, dark secrets that split a family in two.

>We meet Nurse Tessie Bredenkamp, played with aplomb by Nandi Nyembe, wheeling a trolley into a disused operating theatre. Despite the white-sounding name, Nurse Tessie is as black as they come: she was named after a white woman her mother had worked for. Lying motionless on a gurney is Majuba Xhaba (Thoko Ntshinga), she of the three cellphones, none of which works in this hospital of concrete and broken toilets. Majuba is the friend and business colleague of the woman whose child has been raped.

Enter Jo da Silva as Gloria Nathan de Villiers, whose eight-year-old daughter was found raped by a gardener. Understandably Gloria is distraught about this turn of events. She's a woman who passionately believes in the promise of this new South Africa: so much so that she chooses to take her to a government hospital rather than a private one.

Meanwhile, a loudspeaker crackles in the background, calling a Dr Gonzales to reception in Spanish: in the new South Africa, 'Cuban' is as much part of the lingo as the other 11 official languages. A TV set flickers in the corner. We hear the voices of soap opera characters discussing their fates and loves above the action of the play. It all adds to a sense of unreality to the experience of being raped.

As events progress, Gloria is joined by her brother Matthew Nathan (Paul du Toit) who has flown up from Port Elizabeth, and her father Gerald Nathan (Clive Scott), a former ANC stalwart now living in London.

Although they haven't seen each other in years, the Nathan family attempt to talk about what has happened to Sensi. Her mother refuses to acknowledge that her child has been raped and keeps calling the rape 'an incident'. She can barely acknowledge that the rapist has Aids. But this simply serves as a springboard for the opening of dark family secrets. In a number of climactic moments, father, son and daughter release the anger that has built up in each other over the years, and tragic misunderstandings are revealed in quieter moments. It's good to see Scott back on stage, and he plays his part of the ageing ANC faithful with confidence.

The tension of family relations is nicely evened out by the interruptions and concern of Nurse Tessie, who appears and reappears wheeling drugs, bringing nourishment for the waiting members of adding pithy funny comments. Nyembe's performance is easily one of the highlights: her sense of comedy timing is spot on. Majuba, Gloria's friend, also breaks the family tension with her own stories of growing up outside South Africa, and having to learn to speak like a back African, and not a white. It's clear that Majuba has had her own share of trauma, caused, ironically enough by having not been part of the anti-apartheid struggle. Ntshinga plays her role to the hilt: she is subtle, but funny and polished, and a delight to watch.

In between, of course, the TV crackles as dramas are played out on another stage, and voices from the loudpeaker shout out orders and announcements. In a particularly funny scene the loudspeaker crackles out the lottery numbers. No one bats an eyelid, except the father who's been living in First World England all those years and isn't used to life here.

There are plenty of laughs in AUDITIONING ANGELS and Du Toit as the wayward brother Matthew Nathan adds more than his fair share, with his heavy accent and smart-aleck comments. Du Toit plays the role with smartness and a sense of comedic timing to match Nyembe's. There's a twist in the tail of a family driven apart by the demands of the old South Africa, and a sense of hope embodied in the actions of Nurse Tessie towards Aids orphans.

This is a good play. It's funny, and it incorporates a lot of unusual elements, which maintain interest and break the tension. There are moments when it's laugh-out-loud times, and poignant moments that recall the bad old days of the 1980s, and show how apartheid ripped people's lives apart: in this case the fabric of a white family. The ending is bittersweet and slightly contrived, although it could have ended just a scene sooner. Still this remains a rewarding and thought-provoking piece of theatre.

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