DIANE DE BEER reviews:
Mpume Mthombeni as Zenzile Maseko
PICTURES: Val Adamson
Isidlamlilo/The Fire Eater
Presented by The Market Theatre in association with Empatheatre and the National Arts Festival
Workshopped by actor Mpume Mthombeni and director Neil Coppen from an oral history project on migration
Dates: Sunday 30 July at 3pm, 2, 3, 4 August at 7pm and 5 and 6 August at 3 and 7pm
Our first encounter with Zenzile Maseko (Mthombeni) is in her women’s hostel room. She is a grandmother, partially disabled, who has just discovered that Home Affairs declared her dead two years ago. That’s why she hasn’t been receiving her grant, which would enable her to build her dream house in her childhood village, iPharadise.
What might have seemed to those of us looking at a woman, ageing, alone in a room with probably all her worldly possessions, as a small life is given towering proportions as this magnificent Shakespearean monologue starts spilling forth. All of this takes place in the midst of a nightmarish storm, which recalls the recent KwaZulu-Natal floods as well as the stormy life of Zenzile, who is being purged through this devastating, often delirious unfolding of a life of one of millions of similar women in similar circumstances in this country.
Few of us would even handle one of these events that seem to consume her whole being as the disasters roll in and out with regular intervals. Just the word Home Affairs is enough to draw sighs of despair as we think of the rows and rows of people seen in a distance on a monthly basis as they wait to collect their grants, which is often the only lifeline for an extended family.
But Zenzile has courage to fall back on and draw from as her life could not have been more dramatic.
And that’s just the broad strokes.
Yet, more than this epic life story that seems to span many lives, generations and cycles of violence that feel never-ending, is the performance by the magnificent Mthombeni. She transforms Zenzile in a matter of minutes as she draws on all her skills to explore this heart wrenching embodiment of a woman whose life depended on her being a warrior.
And that she is as she rises through each crisis that becomes her life. She simply has to survive. Nothing has been brought on by her own actions or even who she is. It is simply the way people are discarded and ignored as they battle their every daily task.
Few of us have any idea how most of our people live. We think loadshedding is our biggest struggle. For many electricity is but a dream.
Zenzile brings all of that to the light as she creates her own Lear, battling her fraught life as well as the elements. It is an awe-inspiring performance which takes you on an emotional endurance race that’s hugely exciting to witness but also daunting to compute.
Brilliant lighting design by Tina le Roux
Her performance is enhanced by the text and the way she grabs hold of it, workshopped by Coppen and Mthombeni, who never lets up, as well as the staging which is achieved with spectacular lighting that brings a magnificent intensity.
In the publicity it is said that some have referred to this as a modern day South African classic, I can see why. It’s startling yet stunning theatre which explores invisible South African lives and gives one such woman a platform.
De Beer Necessities 