SALT
DIRECTOR: Wynne Bredenkamp
CAST: Emma Kotze, Shaun Smith, David Viviers
VENUE: Kalk Bay Theatre
UNTIL: May 3
RATING: ****
The haunting amalgam of the chaotic and the clinical, Wynne Bredenkamp’s drama explores issues of mental health, reality and dreams.
Added to this intriguing material is a strong element of physical performance, which brings Emma Kotze and Shaun Smith together in athletic and evocative dance as a motif of the work – and the result is an evening of riveting theatre.
The trio of actors could not be better cast.
David Viviers, as the determined Dr Reynolds who believes he can bring Aya (Kotze) out of her comatose state and back to so-called reality, shows why he has garnered several awards for distinguished acting. His approach to this demanding role is understated, but intense, and utterly credible.
In addition he portrays Theo, the anthropologist whose intrusion into the pristine world of Aya and her brother has devastating consequences. The duel role elicited impressive interpretation for Viviers.
Central to the drama is Aya herself, drifting in and out of drugged amnesia, and Kotze’s portrayal is nothing short of brilliant. The duality of self is captured in the two names by which the woman is known: Aya (exotic and feminine) and Patient 365 (the impersonal identification assigned to her in the psychiatric ward). Kotze is ethereally vulnerable as Patient 365 with stiff body and incoherent speech. As Aya, a free spirit believing the sea is her mother and the sun her father, she is a glorious child of nature, supple with movement and uninhibited. In the latter guise she puts one in mind of Miranda in The Tempest, interacting innocently with the stranger in her paradise.
Smith complements Kotze’s performance in the shadowy but arresting role of her brother, the only company she has known on the desert island until Theo’s arrival brings freight of pleasure and pain. Smith’s dancing is a delight to behold and judiciously directed to keep within the confines of an intimate space.
As the drama plays itself out and Aya’s confused memories are shaped into an account of her life before hospitalisation, the destruction of beauty emerges as a bleak coda to this poignant and memorable piece of theatre.