By BRUCE DENNILL
Spanish Steps / Directed by Caroline Midgley / Theatre On The Square, Sandton, Johannesburg
There is a common trope, seen regularly both in theatre and in television and film, where two people who don’t know each other or who do know each other but don’t like each other are forced into each other’s company for a period due to some quirk of circumstances. In something like the Saw films, that works out in a rather gory, gruesome way, but in any number of less hacksaw-y and more circumspect scenarios, and particularly if the people are a man and a woman, the situation allows for the development of more depth and meaning than they would ever have been able to achieve in a less pressured or unique setting.
Gavin Werner’s Spanish Steps seems, initially, to be simply one of those stories, in which his character, Barry, is a lonely middle-aged back-room software developer who finds his, er, companionship online. His colleague, the company’s HR manager Maureen (Dianne Simpson) seems to be much more certain of herself and makes it clear that she views his behaviour in a rather dim light – and not only because they’re having a conversation in a messy basement. But in the course of the narrative unfolding, the piece becomes much more than that. Werner is notably unafraid of asking (via his characters) brutally difficult questions or stating perspectives that go directly against the societal grain while also verbalising, for many audience members, feelings they may not have been able to express before.
Barry, in this context, is more than just a socially awkward employee. He is a father, an ex-husband, and possessed of talents that his workplace behaviour might have obscured. Maureen, likewise, is a daughter, currently single, who might be looking for validation in places she’ll never receive it. And once the audience has been taken into this space and begun to relate to either Barry or Maureen or both on a personal level, Spanish Steps becomes more than entertaining. It’s important.
Werner and Simpson honour this with their performances, showing that there is profundity in being normal and troubled and uncertain and flawed and broken – as we all are. It’s not glossy stuff (and a set built of boxes with rubbish strewn between them reflects that), but it is a journey that reveals as much about the characters as it does about those sitting in the seats and noting that some of the scripted conversation applies to them.
Thematically, Werner’s writing explores father relationships – fathers to their children and children to their fathers – but in doing that he covers a number of other areas relating to how we as men and women behave, privately and in community. He manages to do that with sensitivity and humour, which greatly adds to the accessibility of the story and makes watching this piece enormously satisfying.
