(Ayanda
Fali)
Polished and practiced production voted
runner-up in the audience vote for best Emerging Production. (Review by Keith
Millar)
Wiseman Mncube is a previous award winner,
as a performer, at the Musho! Festival. At this year’s Festival which has just
ended at the Catalina Theatre at Wilson’s Wharf, he was back as part of the New
Director Development Project (supported by the Arts and Culture Trust) with his
intriguingly named play, Back To Nights
Under The Street Poles.
Writer/director Mncube has for some time
been recognised as an upcoming and promising theatre personality, He certainly
lives up to that promise with this rather idiosyncratic and dramatic
one-hander.
Roel Twijnstra was Mncube’s mentor for this
production and their collaboration resulted in a production which was polished
and practiced.
Back
To Nights Under The Street Poles is about a 37
year-old woman who is about to be released from prison after an 18-year
sentence. She is terrified of re-entering the real world and having to face up
to everything that awaits her there. She has survived in prison by reliving her
childhood memories, which she relates during the production, and by relying on
her powerful imagination.
But is she completely stable – and is
reality or imagination waiting for her on the outside?
The woman is played by Ayanda Fali who
gives a strong and passionate performance. However, she is a attractive young
woman and did not quite live up to my vision of a tough, hard-bitten jail bird who
had been behind bars for 18 years.
Back
To Nights Under The Street Poles is a good quality,
tight, festival production. It was voted runner-up in the audience vote for
best Emerging Production at the Festival
The Musho! Festival was presented by PANSA
with support from Twist Theatre Development Projects, The KZN Department of
Arts and Culture, The Daily News, BASA and the Arts and Culture Trust (ACT).
For more details visit http://www.mushofestival.co.za
– Keith Millar
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