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SeZaR,
by Yael Farber
Playhouse,
25th - 29th September 2001
This
stunning production comes from the stages of South Africa. Writer
and director Yael Farber has powerfully adapted Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, setting the play in the context of a fictionalized African
nation state, Azania, and mingling Elizabethan verse with the pungent
rhythms of South African dance, poetry and dialects. The play is suspended
between myth and modernity: radio broadcasts take the place of a chorus,
punctuating the action with accounts of street riots, AIDS, violence
and upheaval in neighboring states; and the set is minimalistic, consisting
mainly of two anonymous, steel-girdered towers. The rituals that the
characters perform are timeless, harking back to tradition and ancestors,
and yet they are rooted in the reality of the present. SeZaR is an
almost unearthly figure, whose charisma seems to emanate from a direct
connection to the spirit world: he dances, shakes, trances under the
power that possesses him, his every action imbued with ritual. The
signs and portents of Shakespeare's text are made wonderfully and
fearfully real, for this is a universe where ghosts walk and blood-sacrifices
are offered even as men struggle to build a modern nation: myth is
history's mid-wife.
I have never seen a Julius Caesar so raw, so seething with
the dynamics of power and betrayal. The Roman context can seem constrictive
and bland, classical posturing and Stoic endurance obscuring the real
agony of democracy. In this production, all the violence of Shakespeare's
text is uncovered: the audience is directly confronted with political
turmoil and the violent reality of modern African life. They are literally
spattered with blood - offal arching through the air as SeZaR swings
aloft an offering of organs and flesh. Yarber's multi-lingual text
also sets up an encounter with the extraordinary heterogeneity of
African culture: we must negotiate the different tongues and accents
of the characters, and open our ears to the layers of poetry - the
melding of iambic pentameter with the complex rhythms of African song,
drumming and speech. In Yarber's play language is invaded on every
level by a new reality, and it is a testimony both to her skill as
a writer and to the remarkable flexibility of Shakespeare's own text
that this invasion is accomplished so perfectly, enabling new meaning
to be dramatically born from an old play. Yarber challenges our reality
and our cultural solipsism, while providing a beautiful feast for
eyes and ears.
I cannot recommend this production highly enough: for its vibrancy,
its intelligence and immediacy, its impeccable choreography - the
fight sequences were particularly exciting. There is nothing gimmicky
about it. Brutas and Porshia delivered powerful, nuanced performances,
balancing passion with nobility; Kassius was the perfect goad, driving
the action with his unrelenting energy and his silver-tongued delivery.
All of the small ensemble cast were uniformly strong, not just in
acting but in singing and dancing as well. I can only hope that this
company will be given the chance to tour again next year, for a week
is too short a time for this production to be seen. See it while you
can.
Sharae
Deckard, 25 / 9 / 01
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