Directors: Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom
Writers: Mothusi Mokoto and Grootboom
Where: Windybrow Theatre, Hillbrow
When: Season Dates: Tuesday to Friday: 8pm. Saturday: 3 pm and 8pm, Sunday: 3pm. Ends September 10
There can be a very fine line between intelligent drama and torrid melodrama. This revival of Cards crosses that line. This is highly unfortunate because this slice of brothel life is being performed in Hillbrow, where it is set.
Art now not only totally echoes life beyond the theatre's walls but it reaches a new audience which would not necessarily have gone to the State Theatre, where this play was produced in its current form, or to The Market last year.
Cards, which first surfaced in 2001 in the North West, was a precursor to Grootboom and Presley Chweneyagae's celebrated Relativity - Township Stories, which opened in the Traverse Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival on Wednesday night.
This explains some of the cast changes at Windybrow. It doesn't, however, explain the absence of Siyabonga Twala (who starred in James Ngcobo's The Suitcase which ended its run at The Market on Sunday) in the pitoval role of Mubara.
What was evident on Tuesday night was that all the characters in Cards walk a tightrope anchored by Mubara, the badass Nigerian brothel lord, and Nono, the innocent country bumpkin teenager, previously brilliantly portrayed by Koketso Mojela.
Should either of these performances be out of kilter the entire house of histrionic cards totters close to collapse.
Making his debut as Mubara, Fumani Shilubana, who originally played the shady Leon with flair, copes with the West African accent but not the nuances of the role (or the badly made costume).
By the second act the depth of the characterisation is out of his reach.
Nono fares far worse. She is pitched by Sinovuyo Vokwana as a 14-year-old retard. To aggravate matters the actor cast as the Bible-bashing cheating husband (Windybrow doesn't do programmes) is totally out of his depth.
The unevenness of the acting, and at times shaky direction, not only reduces the dramatic and social impact, but it turns Cards into an orgy of vulgar voyeurism.
And that's a crying shame.