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Going for the jugular
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April 7, 2009
 By Adrienne Sichel
Macbeki - A Farce To Be Reckoned With
Writer-Director: Pieter-Dirk Uys
Cast: Lizz Meiring, Fezile Mpela, Nthati Moshesh, Sello Sebotsane, Arthur Molepo,Coco Merckel, Mpho Osei-Tutu,Meme Ditshego, Kenneth Fok, Renate Stuurman
Where: The Market Theatre
When: Tuesday to Saturday: 8pm. Sunday: 3pm. Ends May 3
Rating: ****
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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