(Pic by Sean Laurenz: Janna Ramos-Violante and Clinton Small)The third production in The Playhouse Company’s 2011 New Stages season is Mein Soldat (My Soldier) which has two performances in the Playhouse Loft on October 21 and 22. Written by Janna Ramos-Violante, it is directed by Josette Eales and stars Ramos-Violante and Clinton Small.
Mein Soldat is an exhilarating reminder of the power of silence in the theatre space, highlighting the singular beauty and economy of placing and intricate detail. While it is a bilingual piece performed in Austrian and English, it matters not at all which language of the world may be spoken - the audience needs nothing of the spoken word to appreciate what is before them. In fact, it was for that reason the playwright chose to use a language not accessible to a South African audience.
What remains and plays above the spoken word, or rather words understood, is a raw and collective acknowledgement of displacement, grief and a common necessity of man to make connections and bear witness to each other’s basic needs. Set during World War II, the play documents the beautiful and complex relationship of two strangers who find each other through forced circumstances. After escaping from a prisoner-of-war camp in Krems, Duncan, a young British soldier in dire need of assistance, falls into the kitchen of Irma, a young Austrian woman. Irma, for her part, has been alone for six years awaiting her husband’s return from the war.
What ensues is a sometimes taut, sometimes funny, but always ambiguous state of play as the two characters are unable to communicate. Also, there is a letter kept by Irma for some time in a drawer. The letter is in English which she has no understanding of, concerning, we believe, the fate of her absent husband. Her palpable fear of this stranger in her solitary home does not override her need for the presence of another to fill the silence.
Largely due to the impenetrable silence of Mein Soldat, the audience feels liberated and empowered to interpret the silences, laugh at the awkwardness, and place in the characters’ hearts their own wish for what might be said, what might come to pass.
Mein Soldat has performances in The Playhouse Loft on October 21 and 22 at 20h00. Tickets R65 booked through Computicket on 0861 915 8000 or online at www.computicket.com, or call Playhouse Box Office 031 369 9540/9596 (office hours). The performance runs for 55 minutes and is not for audiences under 13 years of age.