NAF: KAPUT!

As was to be expected from this team, the play is quirky and emotive with anguish and pain working alongside humour and innuendo. (Review by Caroline Smart)

This was a good choice for me to start the National Arts Festival off with as director James Cuningham skilfully leads two fine actresses – Helen Iskander and Taryn Bennett – through the roles of two brothers in this story set in some unidentified mid-European coastal village.

Helen Iskander and James Cuningham first blew festival audiences away in 2002 with Fresco Theatre’s Baobabs Don’t Grow There Any More directed by Sylvaine Strike. Mix this combination with the talents of Taryn Bennett supported by Dorian Burstein and you know you’re in for a special piece of theatre that will move you, amuse you, impress you with its freshness and linger long after many other festival pieces have faded from memory.

Georges (Iskander) and Raphael (Bennett) live in a fairly companionable situation in their joint home with Georges’ barber’s shop opening onto the street. Raphael, it seems, doesn’t appear to do anything constructive with his life except pursue a constant stream of young ladies eager for his affections. However, it is orphaned seagull Ricardo who is privy to Raphael’s dreams and desires.

We follow the brothers’ journey from their birth through the booze and cigarettes period and then learning to drive - fake moustaches now replacing the sparse tufts of hair that previously passed for moustaches. The barber’s shop window opens onto the street and acts like a puppet theatre for explanatory images such as the setting, the sea wall, and the vast clear sea itself - undisturbed until a disastrous oil spill.

Despite their obvious femininity, Iskander and Bennet get away with it as male characters. This is theatre, after all! Georges is the more conservative – worshipping from afar the object of his affections, Sofia. He tries to practise ogling the girls the way his brother does so successfully but he’s not very good at it.

Things are tough in the village, soldiers are trying to control a local uprising and everyone is under suspicion. The brothers’ relationship becomes strained when Georges comes to believe that Raphael has made advances to Sofia.

As was to be expected, Kaput! is beautifully performed - quirky and emotive with anguish and pain working alongside humour and innuendo. Audiences need to tune into the accent very early on and the performers need to be careful with projection, there were too many times when dialogue was inaudible - Caroline Smart