Celebrating two anniversaries – The Market’s 40th and the London Royal Court Theatre’s 60th – Mongiwekhaya’s I See You, starring Desmond Dube, opens this week. Diane de Beer spoke to the actor about his role.
‘I’m alive,” was Desmond Dube’s response when his wife checked in by phone to hear how the London rehearsals were going for the Royal Court’s I See You.
Knowing how happy her man was to be on stage and hearing the enthusiasm, she knew “that’s the man I married”.
Stage is Dube’s first love. It’s his passion and what keeps him smiling. And this time round, he was sent to a much darker corner when he was cast as the “bad” cop in Mongiwekhaya’s local drama.
“I thought I was cast to bring some light relief to the character,” says Dube who has always wanted to do more dramatic roles, but even he didn’t trust the decision when it finally came.
It was only when he stepped into rehearsals with first-time director Noma Dumezweni (seen locally in A Human Being Died That Night) and she started stripping away at the “niceness” of the character that he realised his comic ability had nothing to do with his casting.
He knew he was in for something extraordinary with no help from his comfortable place – comedy. But it has been an extraordinary gift for this veteran of the stage. “Finally I could cross the Royal Court Theatre off my bucket list,” he says. It was also a more comfortable segue into this dramatic world in front of an audience that didn’t necessarily know that up until now, comedy has been his trademark.
Something that was familiar, though, were the people featured in the play. “I knew these people, these characters,” he says. He also liked the idea that they were kicking this one off in a foreign country
For Dube, the whole thing was almost like an out-of-body experience. “It’s wonderful to see how stories from the rest of the world play to full houses,” he notes.
Approaching his character, he was determined not to stereotype the policeman he was portraying. “He is a wounded human being,” he says and that’s where he went to find this man’s soul.
He had to go to a dark place and, with the London weather imitating the play’s darker side, Dube for the first time understood what depression could be like. A sunny soul, he didn’t quite go that low, but he glimpsed that world. Once he realised he had to get truly stuck into this one, he felt freed by the fact that he wasn’t cast for comic relief even though the piece does have its lighter moments.
“I delighted in that absence of expectation,” he says.
And even though he is delighted to go in the opposite direction, it wasn’t something that he had dwelt on. “I suppose as you get older, you think of trying different parts,” he says, but one feels that this happy fellow likes to pass on the sunshine he so easily experiences in his life.
One suspects, this role might change things. Just as Ngcobo’s casting of Dube in Nongogo alerted managements that he was happy to return to stage.
“They all thought I would charge too much, that it is all about the money,” he says. He simply hadn’t been asked previously.
Dube has reached that stage in his life and career where he can take charge and make decisions of the heart as well. This particular story, I See You, has been a long time coming, says Dube. He feels it is a story of our time and is pleased that Mongiwekhaya is the one telling it. “He has an old soul and has a way of finding the heart of a situation.”
He stresses that it is the kind of story that will be relevant in 35 years time, and predicts it will be a classic.
Even though Dube knows he could never have done anything differently, being in his element on stage, it is not the most lucrative medium for a versatile actor. He had a cousin who was practising law when he had to make choices. “I was being compared and I told him that acting was my passion. He retorted that passion doesn’t pay the bills.”
Today, though, his cousin concedes that he made the right choice. “(The stage) is my first love,” says Dube dreamily, and that’s our gift.
• See You runs from Thursday until May 1 at the Market’s Laager Theatre.