DOUBLE BILL AT SANDTON’S THEATRE ON THE SQUARE:
SOIL
DIRECTOR: Lynne Maree
CAST: Brenda Sakellarides and Ashley Dowds
DESIGN: Sasha Ehlers
ORIGINAL MUSIC: Nic Sakellarides
LIGHTING DESIGN: Alexander Farmer
MEZA, MIRA AND MAKE-UP
DIRECTOR: Renos Spanoudes
CAST: Taryn Papadopoulos Louch
DESIGN: Sasha Ehlers
LIGHTING DESIGN: Alexander Farmer
VENUE: Auto & General Theatre on the Square, Sandton
UNTIL: November 23
RATING: ****
Community theatre with an underlying and dedicated universal tinge can usually be easily recognised to present us with the most satisfying experiences one can wish for in our theatres.
The short season of a double bill of two Greek-flavoured home bred plays, is a case in point.
Spanoudes’s new drama, Soil, encompasses many a serious theme – ownership, as well as the political landscapes which shape our destiny – but in the end it is a play about humanity, identity, pride, belonging and following your heart to reach your goal in life, but also to achieve what you are called to do.
What is even more satisfying is that both playwrights created predominantly from their own experiences and did not need to divert into the realms of fiction to be inspirational, or, in the case of Stephanou who penned the classic Meze, Mira and Make-up way back in 1982, be extremely satirical, funny and at the right moments also emotional.
In Soil a South Africanised Greek, Nicolaos (payed by Ashley Dowds), arrives in Cyprus in search of home soil. His father lived on the island, but was forcefully removed from his property during the Turkish invasion of July 1974. During an exploratory visit to Cyprus he knocks on the door of the house where his father lived. It is now occupied by Eleftheria, a creative Turkish woman living on her own who reads, paints and seemingly lives a life of contentment.
But questions start flying between the two. They are mostly uncomfortable.
Certain parallel issues to both countries, South Africa and Cyprus, start to emerge. Their meetings over time, however, do foresee that conflict can be avoided and that Nicolaos will perhaps get closure on matters which haunted him over time.
Spanoudes’s often evocative writing has a more poetical than a dramatic flow and this character- istic has been followed with artistic sensitivity by Maree as the director. Sakellarides is initially distanced and even aloof as Eleftheria, but by the third scene her humanity starts to shine through.
Dowds’s Nicolaos is invasive, and even up-front, and at times imponderable, moody and scratchy. But over time he changes and tries to understand why Eleftheria, whose father was a general in the Turkish army, really had no chance to influence the course of history. Does any of us ever have?
In Meze, Mira and Make-up the newcomer Papadoupolos Louch keeps the audience totally entertained as Kalomira, whose destiny was to start life as a Greek girl in Roodepoort during apartheid South Africa. This reviewer remembers Stephanou’s performances of it very well. Louch is more than up to the task.
In the South Africa between the Sixties and the Eighties “normal” formative processes hardly existed. Being Greek and having to live up to the demands parents put on their children was already daunting enough.
With Spanoudes as her director, this actress covers all the emotions needed to enlighten and entertain us about a complicated upbringing in a devided society.
What a pleasure it is to relive through her intense, but highly satirical and comedic performance, that era. She keeps her audience in the proverbial stitches.
- Meze is played on Tuesdays on its own and Soil on Wednesdays. Both are part of the double-bill on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.