By BRUCE DENNILL
The Cry Of Winnie Mandela / Directed by MoMo Matsunyane / Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg
With the performance under review happening on the night of some of the heaviest rainfall Johannesburg had experienced in years, a full theatre confirmed that audiences will go to the theatre – in the middle of town, in a storm – if they feel that a show is worth attending. And with this being a return run for The Cry Of Winnie Mandela, the show’s credentials are confirmed before the lights go down.
The set-up is arresting from the moment you enter the room, with Wilhelm Disbergen’s finely detailed set and lighting convincing you that you’re entering someone’s home and that you have already been taken into their confidence as you take a seat on one of the three sides of the room not taken up by the stage.
It seems unfeasible that Les Nkosi, who plays Professor Njabulo Ndebele (the author of the book of the same name on which the play is based) is making his stage acting debut here, although he does have TV supporting roles and multi-faceted behind-the-scenes theatre experience. His performance is assured, empathetic and occasionally funny, and his sonorous speaking voice makes the parts of the play in which he functions as the narrator a pleasure to experience.
The plot involves an author – Ndebele – trying to figure out a way to express his admiration for the late Winnie Mandela and the role she played in recent South African history. His profound respect for her is not without considerations of the complexities of her character and the unavoidably negative outcomes of some of her actions, and – unsurprisingly – he is struggling to tell the story in a satisfying way.
Enter (unexpectedly, if you’re not familiar with the book) four women who dwell in his imagination – Mannete (Rami Chuene), Delisiwe (Ayanda Sibisi), Mamello (Pulane Rampoana) and Marara (Siyasanga Papu). They enter singing magnificent four-part harmonies, changing the dynamics, raising the energy and injecting layers of colour all at once. The next part of the play, in which Ndebele explores the phenomenon of women needing to wait for their men (who have travelled to other cities to work, gone abroad as exiles or, as with Nelson Mandela, been imprisoned) is the piece’s most powerful. Each of the women unpack their own detailed experiences, impassioned, fierce, hurt, damaged and powerful, while the other women – and Ndebele, mostly seated at his writing desk, or dancing around taking notes – look on and support with gestures and exclamations.
Matsunyama’s direction is evident here, brilliantly supported by the actors, as the off-the-ball (to steal a football term) action adds richness to each well-written monologue, with each actor completely engaged with each other actor in ways that anyone watching closely – for expressions of surprise, clenched fists, snorts of derision or laughter and a dozen other small but productive movements and vocalisations – will appreciate. Everything is made to feel powerfully intimate by the direct interactions by the performers with the audience on all three sides of the stage.
The final third of the play sees the arrival – still in Ndebele’s imagination – of Winnie herself, played by Thembisa Mdoda-Nxumalo, who, in costume, looks eerily similar to the former First Lady. After she is brought up to speed with the situation and how this roomful of strangers has been influenced by her life, she takes the opportunity to try and fill in some of the blanks, showing fearsome intensity as she defends her historically controversial decisions. The play loses some of its lyricism at this point, which ever so slightly takes the edge off its appeal – though how the script (or the book) could otherwise have dealt with the dense political and biographical nature of the source material (history, as opposed to Ndebele’s book) is a difficult question to answer.
Everything else is sublime, from the tone to the insight given into the lives of the women represented by the characters to the look and feel of the production and the universally excellent performances. This is a powerful piece that entertains and educates and, thanks to Alex Burger’s superb adaptation, doesn’t rely at all on familiarity with either Ndebele’s book or even any knowledge of Winnie Mandela.
