So What’s New?
PLAYWRIGHT: Fatima Dike
DIRECTED BY: Princess Zinzi Mhlongo
CAST: Andrea Dondolo, Sibulele Gcilitshana, Thuli Thabethe, Zimkitha Kumbaca
VENUE: Barney Simon Theatre at the Market
DATES: Until August 14
RATING: ****
The opening night of So What’s New? was significant on many levels.
It poignantly plays in the Barney Simon Theatre which celebrates the man who first directed the same play 20 years ago in 1991. The all-female cast is supported by a woman director as well as a female production team. And most importantly, the playwright – also a woman of course – Fatima Dike, was in the house for this opening performance.
The scene was set, the expect-ations were obviously high – and they came up trumps.
Set somewhere post 1976 and before the dismantling of apartheid, with the title So What’s New?, it seemed as if there was deliberate confusion about when the story was being played out – now or in the past.
The text points to the past with references to specific things like the youth’s rebellion and their determination to fight for their freedom. But meddling with your mind, there is a constant display of The Sun, a paper which only appeared much later, the fashions are more now than then and there are constant references to the world we know today.
Yet it is precisely this moving backwards and forwards with no specific effort to confirm a time period that underlines the title of the play so brilliantly.
If it all sounds a touch too dramatic, apart from those serious notes that are the backbone of the play, the rest was laugh-out-loud comedy with the four actresses throwing themselves into their roles with energy and vivacity.
There was no holding back and they bounced their way through every scene, pulling it off magnificently.
As the youngest, daughter Mercedes (played with great honesty by Kumbaca) represents the most sobering voice. She is the character who deals most vividly with the title. She shows an appealing serenity which is charming and is the glue that holds them all together as a family of sometimes disparate women.
Heading the adult pack as well as being Mercedes’s mom, shebeen queen Dee, played courageously by Dondolo, is constantly challenged and crossed by the over-the-top township kugel deluxe Patricia, done with bravado and a swish of the hips by Thabethe. Completing the circle is the drug-dealing Thandi, who is brought to life with unashamed gusto by Gcilitshana.
They’re a gloriously spirited bunch, backed by a director with vision, who show us in a novel way how sisters are doing it for themselves. With apologies for stating the obvious, but how else can one conclude: so what’s new?
It’s insightful while deter-minedly joyous and extremely funny, a rare combination and a treat.