Sorrows & Rejoicings

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RE:Sorrows And Rejoicings
Milnerton Players have a penchant for mounting challenging productions. Certainly their latest presentation, Athol Fugards Sorrows and Rejoicings, strongly tests Mari Mockes directing skills, as well as Willie Sass, Bernie Jacobs, Verity Vass and Phoebe Snayers acting abilities. Mostly because, characteristically, Fugard writes lengthy solo passages - frequently requiring delivery with little interaction. So it is to the teams credit that, although the pace tended to be slow, they brought to life Fugards story about living in exile and the relationship between writer/poet Dawid Olivier Sass, his wife Allison Jacobs, and Marta Barends Vass, his housemaid, lover and mother of his 18-year-old daughter Rebecca Snayer, and their feelings towards him and each other. Fugard, notable for his anti-apartheid sentiments and sensitivity to South Africans pain when forced by the apartheid regime to leave their country, convincingly writes of Dawids sense of loss and longing for the Karoo after 17 years in exile in London. Initially, freedom brings power to Dawids pen. But as years pass and his soul cries out for his roots, his ink runs dry and he starts drinking. Diagnosed with leukaemia, Dawid heads home to die. The action takes place in December 1991 in the living room of his Karoo house after his funeral. The rooms focus is a stinkwood table. Round this Allison and Marta explore their past responses to one another, and their bond with Dawid. Rebecca, a surly, silent presence, refuses to enter the room. But when, towards the end, she bitterly speaks out about being the "bastard daughter of a white man and coloured woman", her performance is disturbingly forceful. In flashbacks Fin McCormicks lighting needed a more supernatural aura we see Dawid pass through his life as a vibrant young writer, a disillusioned drunk, then as a dying man. Apart from his first appearance when he looked more dishevelled than terminally ill, Sass, in long, difficult soliloquies, sincerely conveyed his passion for his land, the women he loved and the heartache about not knowing his daughter. Allison and Marta are strong women. While Jacob is the classic, well-bred English woman, Vass is too soft-spoken and "lady-like" for the stinkhout meid Rebecca nicknames her. However, this drama is worth seeing.

Reviewed by wils2009 on Monday, Mar 23rd, 2009