1949
Performer: Jailoshini Naidoo
Director: Ronnie Govender
Where: Playhouse Drama
When: Runs till September 14
Rating: ****
Riveting is an over-used adjective, but when Jailoshini Naidoo steps on stage, in the first of four stories focusing on a mêlée of diverse characters drawn from the '40's/'50's Cato Manor tapestry, the actress exudes such a magnetic force, you are immediately glued.
By celebrated playwright Ronnie Govender, this is a revival of his acclaimed classic play which draws its inspiration from his book At the Edge and other Cato Manor Stories. The book won the Commonwealth Writers' Award Prize and is, once again, a prescribed setwork for KZN matriculants.
Among many other awards, Govender also scooped a gong for excellent writing, from the English Academy of SA. That Govender writes with immense observational flair is a given - hence with his words and Naidoo's powerful and perceptive presentation, 1949 is an outstanding production all round.
In these four short stories, all set in Cato Manor before its destruction by the Group Areas Act, Naidoo, playing an academic pondering the past, morphs into around 20 characters (comic, poignant, angry, sycophantic, egotistical, devastated so many different faces).
In the first, The Incomplete Human Being, (comically touching on death, the sad dearth of professional mourners and what to do with a new batch of sugar mango chutney when the 84-year-old recipient has suddenly met his maker), the broad theme is the retention of original roots. At one point, Naidoo shrinks into a 10-year-old "boy who does not want to go to Tamil school" - after all, as he says, "we speak English at home".
Needless to say, his father has an entirely different take on the matter of learning Tamil. "Driven by evangelistic zeal", the mother tongue rules with dad
A tyrannical village teacher, a wheedling mother, the angry father, a hilarious diction-challenged radio announcer, a courageous African labourer - with just an accent, a stance or a glance, Naidoo becomes them all.
And did I mention her comic timing? Spot on.
In Lal Phanzi, preening Sunny Boy Boodram ends up on the wrong side of bars desperately upping his personal ante with the other prisoners by telling them he is a murderer.
That he is in for the decidedly un-macho non-payment of a speeding fine eventually comes to the fore (as he is scooped from a fate worse than death by the local bouncer), but not before Naidoo has milked every nuance from the characters.
More poignant is Saris, Bangles and Bees where the euphemism "sanitation worker" is quickly brought to earth by Ayakanoo who knows, only too well that, in a time of no sewage system, he is actually "a shit bucket carrier". A job which, at first, makes him sick, as it would.
And as if that isn't enough, his wife, Savithree, has a mind of her own. Also, isn't it about bloody time they tarred the roads - potholes everywhere - "what do we pay our rates for?" Indeed.
As each character emerges against a minimal set and, via their own stories, share a little more of what it was like to call Cato Manor home, Naidoo builds up to a harrowing denouement.
In part, this finale is the shocking story of Dumisane, the brave black African labourer who, during the 1949 riots, tried to save the Indian family whose property he lived on.
Beautifully lit (designer Richard Parker, technician Joseph Thwala), in the final scene Naidoo takes her audience into the depths of what became of Cato Manor. A place where thousands simply wanted to live life in peace - but it was not to be.
What emerges from Govender's powerful prose-driven tribute is a combination of drama, comedy, high tension, damaged lives, hidden racial hurts and, shamefully blighted lives not lived to full potential due to circumstances way beyond control.
Looking at such a rich mix of characters, obviously based on real people, one grieves for what Cato Manor might have been like today if the notorious Group Areas Act had not raised its ugly head.
As for Naidoo, she is triumph in all the roles.
Book at Computicket. More information from The Playhouse on 031-369-9444. Tickets are R80 and on Sunday, September 14, there is an matinee at 3pm.