CINCINATTI – SCENES FROM |CITY LIFE BY BARNEY SIMON
DIRECTOR: Clive Mathibe
MENTORED BY: Vanessa Cooke
CAST: Ameera Patel, Chuma Sopotela, Brandon Auret, Christien le Roux, Francois Jacobs, Odelle de Wet, Paka Zwedala, Robin Olivia Heaney, Theo Landey
VENUE: The Laager at the Market
UNTIL: September 13
RATING: ***
The opening scene is mesmerising with pulsating music and bodies dancing – almost floating. The dancers are good, their moves and moods are good – while they’re dancing.
That’s what Club Sin Sin is all about. It’s a place where people can hide from the daily horror of their lives, it’s escapism with forbidden togetherness as everyone – all colours and creeds – move to the explosives rhythms of Cincinatti.
But once they leave, as the authorities step in to shut things down as was bound to happen, the talking begins and things slip into place as they always have been. Some are struggling to survive and others are simply struggling with the small stuff.
Simon wanted to tell people living here about their lives, show them the reality of the lives of most of those fighting to survive against a brutal regime. It’s difficult to reimagine the way lives were controlled, how separate South Africans lived their lives, how some could hardly breathe while others didn’t have to think about life.
All of that surfaces in a script that plays out in sketches of people’s lives as they leave their escape behind. It shows lives lived according to the power they’ve appropriated. This is where things get interesting as people show true colours as they bump into their relationships behind closed doors.
It’s the colour divide in full swing while any other differences are much more readily accepted even though gay relationships during the ’70s and ’80s (when Cincinatti was staged) were not out there in any way. It would have been shocking to witness this kind of intimacy on stage at that time.
It is skipping backwards and forwards that makes this such a fascinating work, watching from a 2015 perspective, but trying to return to the precarious ’70s with a country torn to pieces while people tried to play to escape the harshness of their lives.
It’s a dream cast of young talent and it’s a play that allows them to step up and perform. They do as they tell stories that reflect the past in the way they understand. Looking back and capturing the past, showing how theatre reflected on the time at the time is extraordinary.
They all excel. Patel’s introduction to Cincinatti is gritty and sets the tone and we could have seen more of her in the later stretches; Sopotela is sassy, searing and puts herself on the line as she pushes the extremes mentally and physically; Auret has created a colourful character with a look that’s transforming but the accent is tricky and tough to place; Jacobs is perfect as the wide-eyed farm boy who speaks his mind in a way that dashes any hidden illusions; Le Roux fashions her femme fatale, someone who was out there trying everything, but from her cocoon; De Wet nails the spaced-out Pat who doesn’t and can’t deal with life and creates her own private drama; Heaney checks in as a product of her people with her obsession to become a Parisian Bluebell dancer but back home, stepping on the oppressed delusionally empowered; Landey’s slippery Arthur checks out of the real world while protecting his persona; and Zwedala’s Abraham is the conscience of the piece as he rips at and riffs about the past and how it shackled not only those without a voice but those refusing to witness reality.
Mathibe was clear on how he wanted to tell this story. Some scenes work with the necessary sting, others don’t hit the mark as they stand separate from the production. It’s especially played out in the moving visuals which need to integrate seamlessly. While a younger audience might benefit from the sloganeering, steering minds, subtlety is subverted with jarring effect.
A few judicious cuts would also benefit the work which loses punch as some of the scenes drag with too much repetition of intent.
But if you want a flashback, a reminder of lives lived at the cost of others – and sadly – the understanding that the more things change, the more they remain the same, Cincinatti tells you, no holds barred.