RAINBOW SCARS
PLAYWRIGHT: Mike van Graan
DIRECTOR: Lara Bye
CAST: Mbulelo Grootboom, Kertrice Maitisa, Jennifer Steyn
VENUE: Barney Simon at the Market
Until: December 8
RATING: ***
As the title suggests, the play is about the state of the nation and it captures that achingly haunted feeling that everything is not quite as cheery and colourful as the word “rainbow” holds dear.
Perhaps as a people we are way too optimistic and idealistic. Did we really expect to cut through the past like a warm knife through butter without any scars showing? Perhaps it is the type of scars that have popped up that have caught so many unawares and as always in these large-scale catastrophes, it is the poor and the downtrodden who suffer the most.
For the first time there is hope, and yet, even first-time matricu- lants in families are not getting ahead. It is the devastation and desperation of those unfulfilled dreams that Mike van Graan’s writing, Mbulelo Grootboom’s heated performance and Lara Bye’s unflinching direction vivisect so accurately as the young man stands up and turns on the only people he can blame for his dilemma.
Ellen Robinson (Jennifer Steyn, pictured right) adopts Lindiwe (Kertrice Maitisa, pictured left), a born-free orphan whose mother worked as the maid for the family. Familiar stories in the South African landscape, but here Van Graan explores all the twists and turns of this potentially fraught mother-daughter relationship and as we flash through the layers of scar tissue formed through the years, nothing seems impossible because the headlines flashing through our minds keep reminding us of similar incidents.
And perhaps that is a little bit what the text feels like. Van Graan is the playwright who keeps our minds focused on current issues.
With this relationship, he encapsulates what happens with a born-free who is not instructed on how to hold on to the past while reaching for the future, how not to exchange values for easy living and by simply turning away, disregard what is happening around you.
It is a clever text, only an hour long and gone in a flash with the dramatics knocking you off balance as you hardly get to hold on to one before another comes rolling by. The relationship unravels so dramatically that there is no time to dissect any of the disagreements before another pops out.
Bye plays the scenes with a rhythmic impulse as if to march with time – 20 years on and not waiting for anyone. There is a constant impending doom that hovers as the young man stands on the periphery and watches the world pass him by.
Steyn starts out as the cool mom who is learning Xhosa (not for her daughter but for clients) and as the relationship starts showing cracks, her façade feels less steady. It is a dream performance with Maitisa rocking with her cool cat character who wants to lock out with her iPad and itunes and at the most, let rip with a whatever if anyone wants more than that.
It is an emotional roller-coaster ride just to hold steady and keep up. But these are just the headlines. Now we need to put our heads down and get our hands dirty.