(Right: Erika Breytenbach & Ashley Dowds)
(The Unlikely Secret Agent - A tribute to a remarkable
woman. Review by Shannon Kenny)
Following on Ronnie Kasrils’ memoir/biography of his late
wife, Eleanor, playwrite and director Paul Du Toit has fashioned the story of
Eleanor’s political awakening and the love story that was hers and Ronnie’s
into a superbly crafted and performed play.
In the role of Eleanor is Erika Breytenbach (last seen at
Durban’s 031 Festival in “I Can Buy
Myself Flowers”). Breytenbach is supported by a cast of four male actors:
Ashley Dowds, Sanda Shandu, and Luntu Masiza, who weave their way through
postures, accents and attitudes as they assume various roles including that of
Ronnie Kasrils, Special Branch operatives, family and friends, asylum inmates
and clinicians.
What makes this story most remarkable is that it plays itself out mostly in Durban in the 1960s.
Presented as a series of flashbacks at the time of Eleanor’s arrest under Verwoerd’s 90-day detention act, the characters move in and out of shadow and light on a stark stage, save for a typical office desk of the time at stage right, a filing cabinet at centre-back and four chairs at stage left set to face centre stage. Occasionally a projection on the back wall would display Defiance Campaign era photographs or text about the time in which the story is set.
Eleanor is portrayed in her complexity - a mother, daughter, friend, romantic partner, political activist - an erudite woman who clearly could not countenance not acting on her convictions; a courageous woman who risked her reputation and life for the sake of others and the truth. Breytenbach presents Eleanor as a quiet, yet immovable force, resolute in the face of the challenges she is confronted with.
Ashley Dowds is a charming, rakish Ronnie who challenges - and is challenged by - Eleanor. Breytenbach and Dowds capture the couple’s developing romance and eventual partnership - sweetly, believably - making the coming storm of their unfolding story even more heart-wrenching at times.
The brutality of the apartheid era and reptilian creepiness of the Special Branch operatives in particular, is expertly realised by all the male cast in their turn as policemen, in particular Sanda Shandu who portrays the serpentine Steenkamp, the patronising ‘good cop’ interrogator and De Klerk Oelofse as the violent, odious Grobbler, the ‘bad cop’ interrogator and Eleanor’s abuser in chief. Audience members were moved to wince and seethe at the sheer evil of these characters and the system they served by committing their state-sanctioned crimes, many of whom were never brought to justice for “just doing their job”.
While the horror of Eleanor’s incarceration, interrogation and torture are inescapable, there are several darkly comical moments, Eleanor and Ronnie firing off letters to the papers under the guise of being an exasperated middle-class housewife for whom the segregation laws have become inconvenient and onerous to lifestyle to which they’re accustomed; and the male cast’s portrayal of a group of alcoholic psychiatric patients at Fort Napier, Eleanor’s unlikely friends and co-conspirators in her eventual escape.
Luntu Masiza’s portrayal of a cleaner and accomplice to Eleanor’s daring escape from Fort Napier captures so much of the nuance and complexity of the time - of the marginalised, the disregarded who had tough, risky choices to make. People who could easily have looked the other way - because the dangers were ever-present and consequences horrendous - but chose not to.
The writing and stagecraft served this story well. Direction that allowed the actors to shine; actors who embodied characters with ease, grace and energy that gripped us and did not let us go till the final bow.
The evening was particularly poignant for the presence of Ronnie Kasrils and his comrade in arms, Sonny Singh, in the audience.
The Unlikely Secret Agent is an action-thriller-romance of the kind that can only be true because the facts - brutal, remarkable, astounding - are more than any writer could simply dream up. And it is a fitting tribute to Eleanor Kasrils, an unsung hero in the struggle for a country, a world, where we can live lives that are freer, more equitable than we could have in South Africa, 1963.
Thank-you to Playhouse CEO Linda Bukhosini and The Playhouse team for choosing to mount this production. Durban would have been the poorer had it not graced The Loft stage. – Shannon Kenny
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