(Reviews from the artSMart team
currently in Grahamstown at the 2016 National Arts Festival)
(Pieter-Dirk Uys)
Uys is a
smash hit! (Review by Verne Rowin Munsamy)
What is it
about Pieter Dirk Uys that has audiences running to the theatre?
It’s his witty
charm, elegant stage presence and sophisticated ability to simply tell a captivating
story.
The
Victoria Theatre in Grahamstown, once again played host to one of South
Africa’s greatest theatre exports, Pieter Dirk Uys who at 70 has performed over
7,000 solo performances in his career and returns with his theatre marvel, The Echo of a Noise.
I remember
meeting him in this very same venue, many moons ago, after the premier of Auditioning Angels, where he writes
about the rescue of HIVAIDS infected orphan babies in a hospital,and was
humbled by his kind spirit and his writing which pleaded to a generation for action,
or as he so perfectly puts it, point fingers at the system’s flaws.
In this memoir,
The Echo of Silence, he transports
the audience to his childhood at number 10 Homestead Way, Pinelands, Cape Town.He jokingly wears
all black (a colour usually worn by the stage hand) with the words ‘almost
famous’ printed on it. A spotlight and a bar chair are all that is needed on
stage as he boastfully fills the space and our hearts with tales of his youth;
his conflicted relationship with his father (their political disparities and his
love and admiration for him), his love for and pen-pal relationship with Sophia
Loren (which helped him through the suicide of his bipolar mother), his
extraordinary relationship with Sunny (the live -in domestic worker and daytime
‘boss’), the sounds of the trains passing, the revelation that his mother
escaped the persecution of Jewish people by Hitler (and that he himself was
half-Jewish), his rebellious nature which hid a portable radio in his bed to
listen to his favourite radio dramas, the touchy ‘uncle Andre’,and the
political undercurrent of the time.
All of
which shaped and manifested this ‘noise’ that he became against an unjust apartheid
government.
He jests
that the best advice given to him by his dad was not to point and poke with his
finger, referring to his swearing against the apartheid system, but rather to
use that same finger to tickle behind the ear and then wait for the head to
turn and poke their own eye.
If you are
familiar with his plays like Adapt or
Dye, Beyond the Rubicon and Total
Onslaught, you will realise that these sentiments ring true in all of his
writing.The second piece of advice that he shares is that we must fill our drawers
(something he mentions all the way through) with important documents and
memories, and make your lists (of things to achieve). And like the melodic,
soothing symphonies of Bach, this gentle (theatre) giant is able to unearth the
compassion and passion in the audience to extraordinary effect.
Although best
known for his interrogation, through his numerous characters and plays, of an
unjust system, we are not left disappointed by his interrogation of his own,
personal politics, as seen in The Echo of
a Noise. A well deserved standing ovation. - Verne
Rowin Munsamy
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