Director Alan Swerdlow and actor Pieter Bosch Botha are hoping to make fine music with Patrick Suskind’s The Double Bass. Tonight dropped in on them.
Pieter Bosch Botha was first pointed to Paul Suskind’s Double Bass by theatre designer Saul Radomsky after seeing the actor in his last solo show, Fully Committed.
But this one is different, explains Bosch Botha. The first one was about multiple characters, and dependent on laughter. While Double Bass has its funny moments because of the earnestness of the character, it is a drama which gave the actor a chance to really explore the character.
“I was very intrigued when I first read it,” says Bosch Botha because he found the journey of the man, a musician, appealing. The trick is for him to make this character believable and to sustain his story.
Suskind is best known for the book Perfume which was also transformed into film. But he has almost disappeared from public view. “I think the fact that he has such a microscopic view of people in society tells me that he must have felt very deeply. He’s such a keen observer, that appeals to me.”
Telling a bit of the story, Bosch Botha says that it deals with a double bass player in the German National Orchestra. The musician has what he believes is a lifetime contract. Not because that is a reality, but because he flies under the radar. He doesn’t take risks. He is only in the third tier of the double basses, he doesn’t push ahead, purposely, but also feels insignificant.
“He doesn’t feel worthy of being noticed,” says Bosch Botha. But with that comes frustration, at his own confidence and the way he has placed himself in the word.
“He is full of contradictions because he is a fan of structure and order, but he (also) wants a way out.”
Being the man he is, he is too scared to pursue his dreams because he lacks the stature he feels and is scared of failure.
“He never does anything that stands out and has become complacent,” says the actor.
But there’s a desperate secret desire to break out of the mundane and celebrate his individuality. That is also where the tension lies,” says Bosch Botha who understands the fear of the character.
The character has even had to soundproof his room so that his music-playing doesn’t bother anyone. He has been forced to cut himself off from the world, in a sense. This self-imposed isolation in a sense turns into a fear which is much larger than what it seems on the surface and a metaphor for whatever happens to people when they turn to safe spaces and become trapped there.
For Bosch Botha, the discovery of this solo play has been exciting. “I don’t like sitting and waiting. The calls simply don’t come.”
And if you’re wondering about his ability to play double bass, he reminds us that Suskind wrote the play for an actor, not a musician. “I play a few notes and the rest of the music in the play he listens to,” he says. But he does feel those interested in music will identify with the work, yet no knowledge won’t hamper the understanding either.
• The Double Bass, February 17 to March 14 at Sandton’s Theatre on the Square.