Unblocking arteries of violence

Blood ties: Christine (Thoko Ntshinga, left ), the maid, comforts Julie (Cronje) while her son, John (Mantsai, back), polishes the Baass boots.

What lies beneath…

This line is a touchstone for Yael Farber’s 21st century response to Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s Miss Julie.

These words, loaded with ancestral, historical and theatrical meaning, charge contemporary relevance as the action in a Karoo farm house on Freedom Day, 2011 explodes in a vortex of choreographed carnality and dramatic ingenuity.

Subtitled Restitutions of Body and Soil. Since The Bantu Land Act No 27 of 1913 and The Immorality Act No 5 of 1927, this creation by the Canadian-based SA theatremaker was co-produced by the Baxter Theatre Centre and the State Theatre during the centenary of Strindberg’s death.

At its premier at the 2011 Grahamstown National Arts Festival, Mies Julie, which had great production values, struck me as politically simplistic, bordering on the opportunistic.

It lacked the metaphoric and ritualistic cohesion and depth of Farber’s Sezar and Molora.

Six months later, after seasons in Cape Town, Pretoria, the Edinburgh Festival and New York City, this distillation of SA history is less jarring and the lead performances of Hilda Cronje’s plaasmeisie Julie and Bongile Mantsai’s John have matured.

Their brutal encounters and sex scenes are searingly honest and courageous even when the writing lets them down. There’s more to this relationship, symbolising the complexities of post-apartheid South Africa, than screaming “K*****!” and “Boer!” at each other.

Judicious editing would eliminate laboured repetition. In terms of convincing text, nuanced characterisation and performance of this play in The Laager is not Miss Julie’s, but Christine’s.

Thoko Ntshinga’s achingly brilliant servant who has mothered the white Afrikaner girl is steeped in exploitation and survival. Every step, every word, every gesture, subverts the stereotype and eloquently expresses the true scale of this tragedy steeped in battles for land and racial superiority.

Split tone singer and traditional musician Tandiwe Nofirst Lungisa, Mark Fransman on the saxophone and Brydon Bolton (responsible for the electronic soundscape) are a magnetic audio-visual presence as they interpret Daniel and Matthew Pencer’s score.

In untying “the knots that form the legacy of our collective psyche” the director and her creative team unblock arteries of violent memory and retribution.