Cape Town - Every year at this time, I rummage through my bookshelves and find David Sedaris’s Santaland, his hilarious collection of Christmas essays.
And I laugh like a drain clogged with fake donkey hair when I get to Front Row with Thaddeus Bristol in which the main character, a top theatre critic, delivers a sneering review of a primary school nativity play. It’s audacious, cruel and very funny.
Every year at this time, I also trek to Stanford to watch my teenage nieces perform in the village’s annual Christmas play. I wear a black polo neck and a monocle, determined to emulate Thaddeus Bristol. Because when you come from the city, with its artisanal espressos, pulled pork lunches, serious theatre offerings and visiting bands from Seattle, a production at a church hall with farmers in lead roles is as urbane as Crocs and Ricoffy.
The audience is always the same – a mix of visiting grandparents, fragrant ladies from Hermanus with blow-dried hair and silver sandals, barefoot kids and hip visitors from Gauteng or Sweden or London. I make eye contact with these outsiders and smile, mentally saying: “I know, right? This is so charming and quaint. We can just see it as a weird social experiment.” There are ushers and ticket tearers and programmes and heavy stage curtains. I try to appear both bored and bemused (it’s harder than you think).
Before the show even began last Thursday, I started cursing my choice of clothing. Art-critic polo necks are all very well in New York at Christmas when your fake name is Thaddeus, but if you have a real name, live in the southern hemisphere and are in a church hall with an inside temperature of the burning pits of hell, a light thong would be preferable.
Then the lights dimmed and a voiceover introduced the performance. I struggled not to feel excited. This was not Beckett, I told myself. Do not expect to be moved, provoked, existentially challenged or cool of body. The curtains opened. There was a backdrop and small boys in make-up and elaborate costumes. A man who works at the local Spar sang He Ain’t Heavy, and his operatic voice filled the room as he hit perfect notes.
There were scene changes and songs from the Wizard of Oz; ribbons and a silver tin man. There was hip-hop and Florence and the Machines, dry ice and jellyfish; kids dressed as trees and Cinderella ball gowns. By the time Peter Pan – in green stockings and jaunty hat – started singing I Won’t Grow Up, I was like a sweaty kid at my first pantomime: entranced, mouthing the lyrics and applauding so loudly my hands hurt.
During interval, we drank artisanal espressos and ordered platters of coppa ham and olives. I chided myself for being so weak: “Don’t let them get to you. Resist the cute toddlers in their shark costumes. And STOP tapping your feet to Abba.”
But the second half was even more disgustingly seductive, and I stripped off my polo neck, let the monocle slide down my cheeks and wolf-whistled and whooped in my floral dress. There was a tiny Alice, a Cheshire cat and a madhatter. A little boy with a rubber fin strapped on his back scooted across the stage on a skateboard.
And my nieces! One did a ballet dance and she was so poised and graceful I felt my heart exploding. The other shot me what she later said were “death stares” as I clasped my hands together and beamed at her being an excellent tree. I looked across at my parents and they were fragrant and proud and moist-eyed. At the end of the show, I sprang to my feet in a standing ovation. Bravo (wolf-whistle)! Bravo! Afterwards, we drank wine and babbled about the talent and the costumes and the farmer with the Tom Waits voice. My nieces devoured hamburgers, their faces still smeared with make-up. They went over the lines they had fluffed and the lyrics they had forgotten. And then they fell into bed, exhausted, costumes hanging from their doors. Broadway stars.
I drank tea in the garden under constellations and hummed the words from Peter Pan:
I won’t grow up,
(I won’t grow up)
I don’t want to wear a tie.
(I don’t want to wear a tie)
And a serious expression
(And a serious expression)
In the middle of July.
(In the middle of July)
And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me,
Not I.
And I vowed that next year, I will not wear a polo neck or a silly un-pair of glasses. I may even move to Stanford from September, when they hold auditions for the play.
I fancy myself in a pair of wings made from net cake covers, leaping through the air like an overfed fairy, shooting death stares at the city visitors with their folded arms and sweaty steeliness.
Cape Argus