THE MEAL by Mamela Nyamza and NONGOGO by Athol Fugard (Canadian Stage). Presented as part of Spotlight South Africa at the Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley). Runs to April 12 see website for details. $30-$99. 416-368-3110, canadianstage.com. Rating: NNNN
Canadian Stage’s three-week Spotlight South Africa festival gets off to an exciting start with a pairing of emotionally resonant dance and theatre productions that examine how hard it is to shake off personal and collective history.
When you climb the stairs at the Berkeley Street Theatre to see Mamela Nyamza’s The Meal, you find the choreographer/dancer writing endlessly on a scroll of paper, like a recalcitrant schoolgirl, “I must not have a big bum.”
A black dancer in the white world of classical ballet, she must fit the visual stereotype. Nyamza learns this at the feet of a white storyteller and sort-of ballet mistress (Dinah Eppel), who becomes a mother figure who instructs, encourages and finally ties and winds a false braid onto Nyamza’s head, making her the typical “bunhead” ballet dancer.
You can see the pride and happiness on Nyamza’s face as she steps into a pink tutu and learns the choreography for The Dying Swan. But there’s humour here, too, as she issues the occasional birdlike “kwok” sound, undercutting the elegance and solemnity of the dance.
Then she and a younger dancer, Kirsty Ndawo, perform some classical steps that become increasingly interwoven with indigenous dance movements, live music and occasional words, mostly in Xhosa, flung at the audience. There’s anger here as well as comic poses, shaking fists and tears and – apropos for dancing avians – the occasional middle-finger bird shot at us.
Toward the end of the 40-minute piece, Nyamza makes brilliant use of the transformative musical finale of Swan Lake: the two dancers are locked in a tight embrace and Ndawo removes the braid from Nyamza’s head, reinstating her indigenous look.
A strong statement about the multiple levels of colonization, the piece acknowledges the cyclical nature of cultural takeover and the need to break free from it to return to tradition.
There’s a different attempt to break free in Fugard’s early play Nongogo, in which Queeny (the terrific Masasa Mbangeni), who runs a township shebeen (bar), hopes to find a new future with Johnny (Nat Ramabulana), an itinerant tablecloth salesman who wants to branch out and is looking for a partner in several senses, someone “who lives and works clean.”
It turns out that both Johnny and Queeny have secrets not easy to share, and their anticipated union doesn’t go as they hope.
This Market Theatre production, directed by James Ngcobo, pulses with the raw power of the setting and the tension in the lives of the characters, all of whom dream of a better life. They include Sam (Pakamisa Zwedala), who’s known and collaborated with Queeny for years, Blackie (Desmond Dube), a hunchback who works informally as her bodyguard and Patrick (Hamilton Dhlamini), a regular at her shebeen.
Emotional complications erupt quickly. The sharp-edged Queeny softens around Johnny, Sam is jealous of him and plots his downfall, Blackie has a crush on her that she largely ignores.
The cast is excellent, though the comedy involving Patrick is overdone. Dhlamini is more believable when his Patrick becomes serious, Zwedala captures the danger in Sam and Dube’s Blackie is credibly smitten with his unofficial employer.
But the play’s truth rests on the two leads, and the nuanced actors splendidly reveal the characters’ quicksilver moods. Ramabulana switches effortlessly from charming to nasty, while Mbangeni balances the demanding and the pliant she’s a stern negotiator with most of the men but often a giggly girl around Johnny. The disillusionment they each face at the end of the play is vivid and upsetting. Though the action is sometimes predictable, Fugard knows how to deliver a classic tragedy.
