By BRUCE DENNILL
Next!!! / Directed by Amanda Bothma / Kippies, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg
Auditioning is a scary, exhausting, confusing, thrilling and occasionally triumphant experience, during which performers spend a lot of time inhabiting the inside of their own heads. As such, staging Next!!! in the compact confines of Kippies, the old jazz club in the middle of the pedestrian mall in front of the Market Theatre, gives the piece an intimacy that matches its protagonist’s outlook. The show is a revue following the fortunes of a singer as she tries to achieve her dreams in the world of musical theatre. In her perfect world, she will be cast as Velma in Chicago – an ambition that set her on the road to a theatre career and which helps sustain her through any number of challenges along the way.
One of the toughest challenges, not least because it has nothing to do with her talent and how that should be judged, is the set of perceptions that come with the performer’s heritage. She’s a woman who comes from a traditional Xhosa background of which she is rightly proud, but if a casting director can’t pronounce her name Relebogilethata in the audition, what chance is there of getting it above the title on a Chicago poster?
The songs chosen and performed by musical director/accompanist Jacques du Plessis and actress/singer Dikelo Mamiala cover the gamut of styles and content, taking in classic South African pop (from a South African icon who did shatter all the glass ceilings – Miriam Makeba) and stage musical material both immediately familiar and more niche. The selection offers Mamiala a chance to exercise formidable vocal range, from the clear clicks of the Xhosa material to gorgeous smoky jazz tones and from breathy introspection to full-bore belting (and plenty of it)
Amanda Bothma’s script, which connects the musical compositions well without fleshing out the storyline too much – the focus remains on the tunes – keeps the pace high, and Du Plessis’ arrangements are often contractions of or excerpts from longer pieces, further spiking the energy as Mamiala switches between iterations of her character and hints of others.
For theatre professionals, this piece will be almost disturbingly relatable, but you don’t need to have any experience of auditions to understand how it feels to have who you are and what you do disparaged and disregarded on a brutally regular basis. Neat and condensed, expect to see Next!!! continue to travel (it’s already been around much of SA and to New York) and to do well.