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MacBeki

REVIEWS OF MACBEKI IN JOHANNESBURG  —  APRIL 2009

Trouble boils and bubbles in MacBeki

– Edward Tsumele, The Sowetan, 17 April 2009

Let me tell you a story. There is a play that would be lots of fun throughout for everyone if it were not painful to those who support a former president of a country somewhere in Africa.

This former president is portrayed as powerful and power hungry by the scriptwriter. Not only that. According to the playwright , he was also paranoid and obsessed with the fear of being removed from office.

Now it is not for me to judge the character, his traits or astuteness and leadership qualities or lack thereof.

I am also not going to judge if this particular play is a true portrayal of events that led to the downfall of this particular president, ironically orchestrated from within the ranks of his own party.

I am also not going to judge whether those that plotted his downfall were justified or not, or whether the means they used were suitable or not.

What I can judge though is the suitability of MacBeki as a piece of political satire, particularly in the context of recent and current political developments in SA .

Running at the Market Theatre until May 3, this production also has strange characters and I am also not going to tell you which political characters they represent. What I can tell you is that it will not take you long to draw your own conclusions.

Described as a "transgressive variation of Macbeth" this play is written and directed by South Africa’s legendary satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys.

Written in mid-2008, the comedy takes place in Luthuli Castle where the aging King Maduba (Arthur Molepo) is nearing the end of his reign. In the wings, successors plot and scheme, including the favourite son Lord Ramabanquo (Mpho Osei-Tutu), Lord MacBeki (Fezile Mpela) and the ambitious alcoholic Lady Manta (Nthati Moshesh).

A host of other characters, including Lord MacZum (Sello Sebotsane), Prince McTrev (Coco Merckel) and The Porter (Lizz Meiring) are drawn into the fray.

The three witches in Macbeth have been reinvented as journalists (Renate Stuurman, Kenneth Fok and Meme Ditshego).

Go and see this show as it will make you either angry or excited depending on which side you are on. No fence-sitting here.

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Review: Macbeki: a farce to be reckoned with

– Peter Feldman, artslink.co.za, 2 April 2009

The Comrades and William Shakespeare make unusual bedfellows. But this is what happens when a gifted playwright like Pieter-Dirk Uys sets his mind to re-writing one of The Bard’s most famous works with inspiration from members of the ruling party and other characters who happen to get in the way.

This slice of lunacy, which provides audiences with moments of great hilarity and clever word interplay, makes for an engaging night at the theatre.

Uys’ magic begins to weave it own spell as the hilarious action unfolds and the various identifiable characters make their appearance.

Described as a "transgressive variation" of "Macbeth," the play retains the elements of ambition, power, deceit and greed during its discourse, with the happy family of South African players contributing immeasurably as the farce unravels.

Written last year, the comedy is set in Luthuli Castle where the aging King Maduba (Arthur Molepo) is nearing the end of his reign. In the wings, successors plot and scheme, including his favourite Comrade Lord Ramabanquo (Mpho Osei-Tutu), Lord MacBeki (Fezile Mpela) and the ambitious alcoholic Lady Manta (Nthati Moshesh).

The canvas is extended as a number of other characters, including Lord MacZum (the imposing Sello Sebotsane), Prince McTrev (Coco Merckel) and The Porter (the inimitable Lizz Meiring), are drawn into the struggle.

The three witches from Macbeth have been reinvented as journalists (Renate Stuurman, Kenneth Fok and Meme Ditshego). And instead of receiving messages through supernatural means, as in "Macbeth," this lot receive theirs via the cell phone.

In this election year, it’s interesting to note how Pieter-Dirk Uys has seized upon an opportunity to create works that confront and expose individuals who have such frightening power.

The set and costume designs by Nicholas de Klerk are impressive and director Uys manages to maintain a tight rein on proceedings — even though it’s a relatively long play and some of the dialogue is difficult to hear because of indistinct vocal delivery.

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**** Going for the jugular

– Adrienne Sichel, Tonight, 7 April 2009

South African political life tends to be stranger, and more unpredictable, than any elaborate fiction.

Any dramatist attempting to reflect this chaotic state of affairs, and affairs of State, has to be ruthlessly imaginative and daring. With his decades of practice of fearlessly taking on the duties of the court jester, during and post-apartheid, Pieter-Dirk Uys has all the right credentials for this task. MacBeki has to be this writer's most ambitious foray into the body politic yet.

Finding a coherent dramatic form, in which the characters and scenarios are so yesterday, yet at the same time, today, as well as prophesying tomorrow, is the writer's biggest hurdle. That brief is easily met in Uys's now-legendary satiric one-man shows. Translated into a formal play, that format takes some strain.

In the curiously paced, fragmented, over-written first act, MacBeki is socio-political comedy landmined with savage satire and elements of sex farce. Everything falls into place in Act 2: a wily comedy, a political satire, a compelling tragedy, rolled into one.

Uys's razor-wire wit is juxtaposed against samplings of Shakespeare's text. The frame of MacBeki unashamedly borrows, deconstructs, relocates then reconstructs the structure and main characters of Macbeth.

The classic sycophantic machinations of the warlord, and his virulently ambitious Lady, transpose with eerie ease to contemporary South Africa, pre- and post-Polokwane. The bloodless coup, stained in beetroot juice, is every bit as sinister and dangerous as the original Scottish plots.

MacBeki's main danger is that it doesn't fall victim to its own effusive cleverness, commentary and schizophrenic style.

The invention is fast and furious. The Porter (the imposing Lizz Meiring) is the token white actor, the victim of over-transformation in the arts. The three witches (Meme Ditshego, Kenneth Fok and Renate Stuurman) are journalists. No cauldrons for them. With their cellphones and laptops they stir rumour and controversy.

Amid the lampooning, language games and literary licence, epic truths and ingenious characterisations surface on Nicholas de Klerk's minimalist boma set. In the writing stakes Uys can be more than a match for the Bard, twinned with his direction of a handpicked company of actors who flaunt their versatility and expertise. All the main characterisations sidestep caricature while retaining implied cartooning.

Fezile Mpela's interpretation of Lord MacBeki, steeped in mounting pathos, reveals a fatally flawed leader, an Aids pandemic denialist, with blood on his hands. Nthati Moshesh is sensational in the roles of the boy messenger and Winnie, but her career tour de force is Lady Manta, the sozzled, power-hungry keeper of the muti.

Sello Sebotasane's Lord MacZum exudes Zumaesque charismatic bonhomie through dramatic depth and physical breadth. Coco Merckel's financial guru Lord MacTrev is a slyly manipulative comrade (who vanishes momentarily to make way for a floating cameo of the Dalai Lama).

What a gift it is to see Arthur Molepo bring his vintage experience and insight to the creaky King Maduba; an ethnic nightmare of a praise-singer and Julius the Youth Leader.

Ditshego, Fok and Stuurman do sterling renditions of multiple characters. Not forgetting Mpho Osei-Tutu's mischievous fat-cat capitalist comrade Ramabanquo.

At times MacBeki may be trying too hard to reach the head and the heart simultaneously, but it certainly provides much-needed thought-provoking laughter — no matter how painful.

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MacBeki our tragic hero

– Poppie Mphuthing, The Times, 15 April 2009

Renowned comic Pieter-Dirk Uys, also well known for tramping the political campaign trail as alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout, spent a little time out of his dress to sit at his scribing machine and pen political satire MacBeki.

Many of us know that Uys gets a real kick out of mocking flailing politicians and MacBeki is no exception except that this play, written and directed by Uys, takes his wit and humour to a new and truly fabulous level.

The plot, that is a satirical re-working and reflection of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Macbeth, presents a myriad of familiar motifs circa 11th century that are re-born in South Africa circa now. Set at Luthuli Castle the plot tracks the scheming and plotting of partners-in-crime Lord MacBeki and Lady Manta as they fight to keep control of Luthuli Castle.

The familiar and jovial character of Maduba looks on benevolently and in somewhat naïve fashion as he presides over infighting and plotting within the inner circle of Lord MacBeki, Lord MacZum, Lord RamaBanquo and Prince MacTrev. Uys cleverly traverses the tricky line of reality and imagination adapting Shakespeare’s gruesome original by keeping all the characters alive, lest he be accused of inciting violence, or worse still treason perhaps.

From Lord MacBeki’s banishing of Lord RamaBanquo to the world of business; to the uneasy and sinister influence of Lady Manta over Lord MacBeki; and the final battle between Lord MacBeki and Lord MacZum as Polokwane Forest marches towards Luthuli Castle — there is a seamless interweaving of Shakespeare’s original and Uys’s take on contemporary South African politics. Indeed, what would a satirical treatise of our politics of the day be without a rendition by Lord MacZum of Umshini Wam and the sight of Lord MacBeki preaching from his soapbox? (Yes there is an actual soapbox on stage).

Nthati Moshesh, currently playing the feisty Mo in TV soapie Scandal! is fabulous, with her wickedly funny characterisation of the scheming, alcoholic Lady Manta. With clown-like make-up, mad demeanour and armed with a tumbler of whiskey in every scene, she draws many laughs. The porter (Lizz Meiring) punctuates the plot timeously with crisp and witty lines.

The play has a distinctly 21st century feel with the characterisation of Shakespeare’s three witches as journalists, whose brooms are substituted with cellphones and laptops. The script even bends to comment on up-to-the-minute issues. The cameo appearance made by a brightly clad Dalai Lama figure makes the point.

Most of us probably only read Shakespeare’s Macbeth for the sake of high school syllabus penance, perhaps a few of us read it for sheer fun. But whatever familiarity audiences do or do not have with Shakespeare’s Macbeth it hardly matters. MacBeki is a classy comedy regardless, incorporating bold characterisation, metaphors, duplicitous imagery and dry humour

.The observations that are highlighted are as funny as they are frightening, but also re-iterate the point that if you can’t laugh at yourself then you are probably taking yourself much too seriously!

In the words of Shakespeare or be it As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts

(Act 2, Scene VII)

Uys makes perverse reference to Shakespeare’s sentiment over and over again in his play. MacBeki is satirical social commentary at its best. What’s that old saying? If you can’t laugh then all that’s left is to cry. And during these times of political turmoil and national hope, what good would crying do?

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Bubble, bubble …

– Percy Zvomuya, Mail & Guardian, 3 April 2009

Pieter-Dirk Uys insists, his tongue almost through his cheek, that his new satirical play is "fictitious and any resemblance to political figures … is purely coincidental".

No prizes for guessing the real identity of the main character in MacBeki, which opens this Friday at Johannesburg's Market Theatre, or of the character McZum. Only slightly less obvious are Lady M, Lord Ramabanquo and Maduba.

The play uses Shakespearean references, urban legends, rumour and poetic licence in a sweeping Machiavellian ("MacBekivellian" to Uys) narrative about the lust for power and the ruin it brings the protagonist.

In Uys's version, MacBeki and Lady M are close friends, their relationship dates back to the hoary landscape of Leningrad and London where "Johnny Walker in hand, we plotted and planned".

In a speech echoing Hamlet MacBeki deliberates on whether to get Maduba out of the way. "To be or not to be king, that is the question ..." The indecision doesn't last long: he soon decides "the king must be removed".

Unlike Macbeth, MacBeki decides against killing for the throne. "I am very afraid of Ramabanquo. There is something noble about him that makes me feel lesser to him," he muses. Ramabanquo is soon deployed to the corporate world after MacBeki tells three companies, Sosal, Angla and Giltfelds, that he wishes to "see more of us represented at the helms of your businesses".

MacBeki presides over a land in the grip of a pestilence. He needs advice from Lady M, still to unpack her "medical books, diaries and my priceless recipes", who points out that "the contentious A leads to the destructive B, which then adds up to the deadly C. C stands for corpses which will become rich earth to give bloom to the new world. Our new world."

MacZum signals his entry declaring: "Bring me my machine gun." Later he insists there "was no forcible sexual assault … We had consensual relations." Lady M's health is faltering. "It is my liver. I contracted an ailment while in the jungles during the struggle," she says, prompting Ramabanquo's acerbic riposte: "Mixing Leningrad vodka, British gin … would send any liver into exile."

The once clear-headed MacBeki starts seeing apparitions and hearing voices; he then loses his gift for highbrow oratory and his descent culminates in his overthrow in the Polokwane Forest.

MacBeki is by turns funny in its prodding at South Africa's political scene (on SAA: "Chicken, beef or dagga?") and lazy in its shameless rifling of urban legends. Uys himself is an ever-present character, who lends a narcissistic feel to the narrative. But as the blurb says, it is "a farce to be reckoned with".

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Theatre: MacBeki

– Mary Jordan, Business Day, 14 April 2009

IF YOU were marinated in Shakespeare as you grew up, you will know his Macbeth to be one of the finest pieces of thrilling drama ever written, a sublime blend of treachery, suspense and pathos. The crimes and bloodlust of the Thane of Cawdor are extensive and repellently grotesque, his murders passion-crazed.

In MACBEKI , showing at The Market Theatre in Newtown, playwright and satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys has dug deeply, searching Shakespeare’s play to find hidden riches, seams to explore, small, shocking ideas and tiny secrets that reveal or give away an enormous amount about our own political predicaments.

He has begun by using a significantly different title so that people don’t turn up expecting a strictly naturalistic rendition of the Bard, yet will recognise the frequent and often funny allusions to the original. As he delves into the themes of conflict, Uys attempts to communicate those truths in Macbeth that will resonate with a 21st century audience. When he messes about with the text, there is the immediate excitement of contrasting energies; and, as the characters move from one intense emotion to another, all manner of unexpected things are released.

You know the plotline of the Scottish play: how Macbeth murdered Duncan in bed to claim the kingship of Scotland and thereafter, with the encouragement of three witches and egged on by his ruthless wife, kills anyone who might endanger his throne. He is reassured by the cryptic promise that he will never be vanquished; but the very ambiguity of the message conceals the transience of his power.

Now nobody is about to be killed in this version, only recalled or retired. For every member of the cast, English is a foreign tongue, so initially the costumes by Noluthando Lobese are key to the imaginative depth of the characters. You will probably see nothing funnier on our stages this year than Arthur Molepo as the Youth Leader, clutching the magazine rack he made in his woodwork class, his blazer and short shorts proclaiming him the child who never grows up. The witches are members of local and international TV networks ; and the genial, towering Sello Sebotsane, in traditional Zulu dress, is Lord MacZum, his warmth and sweetness of tone sparking thunderbolts as he works the crowd at Polokwane, singing his song of machine guns.

Sebotsane is hilarious, frightening and awe-inspiring; so too is the young Mpho Osei-Tutu playing Lord Ramabanquo, dispatching his lines with the greatest urbanity and managing to convey, quite brilliantly, the genuine joy, idiocy and scandal of being a public sector fat cat .

At the centre, playing a man of sophisticated intelligence with relaxed literalness and utter clarity, taking the heat before he buckles in loneliness, is the still presence of Fezile Mpela as Lord MacBeki. Nthati Moshesh, strung about with onions and beetroot, has the thankless task of portraying his consort, Lady Manta. She is shrill, improbable and unlikely in her role.

Uys’s unstuffy approach creates a broad, pantomimic atmosphere, filled with breezy confidence and irreverent gusto. In the two acts, everything is artfully arranged to give plenty of laughs and the show has the pulse of real life. Ingenuity such as this is a real tonic among the alarms and excursions of SA today.

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The last laugh

– Natalie Bosman, The Citizen, 6 April 2009

In true Pieter-Dirk Uys style, MacBeki doesn’t hold back. Appropriately dubbed "a farce to be reckoned with", Uys’s Shakespearean-inspired script pokes a very deliberate finger at some well-known figures in society.

Using the likes of Lord MacBeki (Fezile Mpela), Lady Manta (Ntathi Moshesh), Lord MacZum (Sello Sebotsane) and Prince MacTrev (Coco Merckel) as his pawns in a satirical play about power, greed and deceit, Uys airs the country’s dirty laundry with glee, laughing at the hypocrisy and chiding the inadequacies.

To quote from MacBeth, the original play whose plot forms the backbone of Uys’s farce, "Nothing is, but what is not."

That is to say, Lady Manta’s drinking habits are not a problem, Lord MacZum is not crucified (literally, in the case of MacBeki) by his comrades and Lord MacTrev is not a fence-sitter, siding with Lord MacZum when the fates seem to be in his favour.

When it’s not eliciting a giggle, or a gasp of shock, Uys’s dialogue is extremely hard-hitting. But it does take more than a fantastic script to make a memorable play, and MacBeki is a little sparse in terms of the "wow" factor.

Most of the acting is strong, especially the roles of Lady Manta and the tempestuous Porter (Lizz Meiring), but others are not.

Arthur Molepo’s unenthusiastic King Maduba rendition is somewhat compensated for by his role as a zealous youth leader bearing a resemblance to a certain Julius Malema, but only just.

Stronger stage direction and a few more glitzy costumes would also have gone a long way to avoid the stage feeling so large and unused at times. But all in all, kudos to Uys and his cast for providing some sobering perspectives just ahead of the elections.

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Review: MacBeki

– Robyn Sassen, artslink.co.za, 4 April 2009

"MacBeki" is a seething mass of political humour. It splays our nation’s intimate secrets, revealing chilling parallels with the classical tragedy.

Structurally, "MacBeki" rests on the Shakespearean tragedy; its humour is sometimes cheap in its urbanity, sometimes cutting in its cruelty, brilliant in its bitterness. It’s a tale of Aids and its discontents, of this country’s crippling challenges: from xenophobia to misinformation and ministerial corruption, and one of unbridled lust for power, in its ugliest (and most pathetic) form. But this is a farce, not a tragedy, even if the underlying layers hit home with profundity more than the rolling heads and blood baths in other interpretations.

MacBeki (Mpela), is a small man, cowed by an overpoweringly shallow woman. Lady Manta (Moshesh) is a tippler; she’s an elegant, occasionally clumsy caricature, who plays into idiosyncrasies of court gesture with delicious sullenness. With bad hair and uncomfortable shoes, she drives her husband’s shenanigans, and is taken by "the liver rejecting the body" after a transplant. But for the "unsex me" monologue which is too heavy-handed, Moshesh manifests a beautiful balance between physical humour, wiliness and naïveté. Tripling as the child who warns MacBeki of the attack from Polokwane Forest and as Winnie, she’s the play’s unequivocal star.

Part of this play’s success hinges on casting. Sebotsane is a perfect MacZum; his dance, in Zulu dress to Umshini Wam is outrageously chilling. And there stands MacBeki, on a wooden box (to give him height). His academe-speak slipping meaninglessly off his tongue, his wife gone, his enemies ignoring him - a fate worse than death.

The corollary to the play is the porter (Meiring). She epitomises white South Africanness, complete with its chip on its shoulder, education and guilt. "Alas our poor country", she utters, toward the play’s denouement. "It is too frightened to look at itself. This is no longer the land where we were born; it’s the land where we’ll die." She doubles as Celine Dion, whose sugary music is the weapon of mass distraction, precipitating the loss of relevance of King Maduba (Molepo) and MacBeki, the latter in a camp and wonderfully ghastly crucifixion scene.

The crooks in a Marx brothers’ ethos (Stuurman, Fok, Ditshego), who double as the journo witches - gifted, by dint of their cell phones, with clairvoyance - cite their mantras with woodenness; this is balanced by the text’s acerbic wit. The Jewish caricature Fok offers is too dated in its Shylock Europeanness to be convincing.

The set plays into the angle of Uys’ criticism. Evocative of a traditional African lapa, with upright poles defining the space, a mock baobab tree, and thrones made of uprights, in a garden-furniture-like aesthetic, it presents a woody prism into what is to be, but does make for an understanding of MacBeki in his office anachronistic.

With arbitrary references to popular culture, the humour in "MacBeki" is cheap and easy in the first half, blunting the production’s edge; as the plot thickens, the nuances become more layered more poisonous. Having said all that, you’ve got to know your "Macbeth" for this one. Without the aid of Polanski’s interpretation, I would have floundered and dozed.

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