WILD. Directed by Alan Committie, with Robert Fridjhon. At Theatre on the Bay, Camps Bay, daily at 8pm and Saturday at 8.30pm. STEYN DU TOIT reviews.
Robert Fridjhon always wanted to grow up to become a game ranger. Upon discovering that one needed to obtain a degree instead of a diploma first, however, he instead ended up pursuing a career in theatre and comedy.
But the wild never left him and he found himself often wondering what his life would have been like had he answered nature’s call. Then, right in the middle of a stand-up routine one day he suddenly put down his microphone and walked off stage.
Over the next two years Fridjhon dedicated his life to volunteering at initiatives such as the Free Me Animal Rehabilitation Centre in Sandton and Rhino and Lion Park in Krugersdorp. An eventful period to say the least, it was his flirtatious relationship with a lioness that eventually even led to an epiphany.
Imaginative, offbeat and filled with a plethora of puns, Wild sees the actor ( Jeeves and Wooster, A Load of Bull) gather his experiences of working in nature into one wacky performance. A mixture of stand-up comedy, sketch humour and good old-fashioned storytelling, this one-hander often succeeds in, as promised by the poster, sinking its teeth into the viewer.
Directed by longtime pal and onstage partner-in-crime Alan Committie, the only items on the empty stage are three identical black chairs. Swinging from seat to seat, herding them together or stampeding over all three at once, it is up to Fridjhon to bring the show’s human and animal characters to life.
Plot-wise the story starts off in the urban jungle, where we meet his character, who works in marketing, busy slogging through the day with a hangover. He’s an animal, he tells us, who spends his nights roaming the city’s bars and red light districts. Left waiting at home is his fiance, who he claims to love and suspects he’ll probably marry eventually.
An interesting conversation with a cat in a strip club’s back alley, followed by an unexpected knock to the back of the head, takes the story into a surreal direction. Dreaming of a moment in his past where he had an encounter with a lioness named Ruby, Fridjhon’s protagonist will experience several more eventful moments before waking up to an important realisation.
When it comes to enjoying Wild, there are three elements to look out for. The first is the acting. I lost count after of the amount of performance disciplines – from mime to method acting – that Fridjhon draws on, or the amount of foreign or wacky accents he’s able to put on. A raconteur in every sense of the word, it is his storytelling skills that make for the strongest part of his performance.
The story about his character becoming the object of Ruby’s affection is completely true, it is revealed during the show. A resident of one of the sanctuaries he volunteered at, so enamoured was she by him that she coquettishly disappeared into the long grass whenever he would enter her encampment.
Left alone and being distracted by her male partner, she’d then come jumping out of her hiding place to lick the actor from head to toe. “This is why I’m bald today,” he confesses with a smile.
The second reason for the production’s success is Fridjhon’s skill as a writer.
He is king when it comes to churning out puns, and even though they usually have the potential to derail an otherwise great performance pretty quickly, I simply cannot imagine this show without its pun-a-minute policy.
The third reason to try and make a plan to go see Wild before it ends this Saturday is its star’s passion for nature and conservation.
After returning from his sabbatical Fridjhon has since donated a part of everything he’s earned to related initiatives. This time around 10% of ticket sales will go to the Drakenstein Lions Sanctuary in Paarl (www.lionrescue.org.za).
Established in 1998, the facility currently hosts 34 animals who were rescued from abusive situations such as circuses, zoos and canned hunting farms. They are unable to be rehabilitated back into the wild and will stay there for the rest of their lives. And, with 900 kg of meat consumed weekly on the premises, these furry friends are going to need all the ticket sales they can get.
“Let me start again,” Fridjhon is often heard interrupting himself during the show.
Apart from celebrating the gift of animals and stressing the importance of conservation, Wild is also ultimately a show about turning points that lead to living life through one’s passions.
l Tickets are R95 to R196, www.computicket.com, 0861 9158000.