(Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi)
(Reviews from the
artSMart team currently in Grahamstown at the 2016 National Arts Festival)
Storytelling theatre at its best. (Review by Verne Rowin
Munsamy)
Last year I was blown away by Undermined, a show about miners using Physical Theatre as the
backbone to tell the story. This year, the same troupe of actors and producers,
Here Manje and KB Theatre Productions, return with A Man And A Dog.
Shows begin at 10h00 at the festival and so on a damp and
‘early’ morning, I made my way to Princess Alice Theatre to admire the physical
prowess of A Man And A Dog, written
and directed by Penelope Youngleson and previously nominated for The Fleur du
Cap and winner of the Silver Standard Bank Ovation Award.
The show makes use of oral traditional, song and physical
theatre. Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi is simply magnificent as he recounts the
relationship of man with dogs. He has a bold, baritone voice and physical
detail that arrests your attention. “Blood doesn’t forget, it always returns to
the heart, like family”, we follow Mkhwanazi and his search for a family to
belong to. Just one of the storylines, you are entangled in the lives of
various characters and situations but your attention never deviates from the
powerful performance that is given by Mkhwanazi.
We feel for this young man who killed his own dog on his
journey to discovering who he was, in a world where he had no ‘real’ male role
model. This lost little boy becomes a lost man.He is lost to the streets but is
then rescued by his Gogo, who never stopped searching for her lost family.
Storytelling theatre at its best. The show is very deserving of all its
accolades. - Verne Rowin Munsamy
A Man And A Dog has
two more performances at Princess Alice Hall: July 9 and 10 at 11h30.
(For more information
on the National Arts Festival click on the banner advert at the top of this
page)
Posts
