By BRUCE DENNILL
Lungs / Directed by Bianca Amato / Studio, Pieter Toerien’s Montecasino Theatre, Fourways, Johannesburg
Duncan Macmillan’s text-heavy two-hander has been around a while now – it was first staged in 2011 – but it hasn’t lost a single step in terms of its validity and relatability. Perhaps sadly, this has much to do with the fact that people will always be anxious, and this script unpacks the nuance and complexity of being anxious – as a man, as a woman, as a couple, as people of a certain age, as people with an eye on conservation and the environment and more – in a dense, insightful, funny and often uncomfortable way.
The Quickening Theatre Company’s production stars Jazzara Jaslyn and Sanda Shandu as a the play’s unnamed protagonists and their individual and collective performances speak of great talent, but also superb casting and tight, careful, empathetic direction that gives definition to the space in which the actors must work while also encouraging them to completely fill it with timing, movement, expressions and other aspects above and beyond the dialogue. Patrick Curtis’ two-tiered, slightly canted set creates extra angles, layers and shadows for the cast to work with and Denis Hutchinson’s sensitive lighting underlines the emotional ups and downs of the script.
The story begins at a breathless, frenetic pace, with the characters standing in a queue at a shop, where he has just asked a question that could have long-term, life-changing consequences. Her reaction, and the free reign Macmillan’s writing gives her to express her feelings, set the tone for the show as a whole. Here, the audience understands that this is not a piece that will pull punches, that it encourages and even demands both intellectual and emotional investment, and that this is a production where every pause and grimace and shift in position is adds heft to the delivery.
The couple go through a number of completely relatable relationship issues, for good and ill, and respond in ways that are utterly real and yet more so – more eloquent; more sharply defined; more headstrong; more confused… Macmillan includes a consistent thread about climate change and how humanity has to take responsibility, but that adds colour to this couple’s perspective on the world, rather than defining it. Laughs emerge both when there are jokes and quirks and when discomfort (vicariously felt on behalf of the characters or due to a connection with the material) can’t be expressed in any other appropriate way. Changing locations and timelines are communicated by simply turning one way or another or adapting vocal tone, and it’s never confusing to follow each new direction.
Jazzara Jaslyn and Sanda Shandu provide phenomenal performances, vanishing into their characters and inspiring a range of emotions from joy to frustration, amusement to anger and empathy to pity. You can see why the characters attract each other and why they make each other angry, why they feel like they fit together and why they sometimes clearly don’t. Some conflict is the responsibility of at least one of them while some brutal experiences are outside of their control. Lungs covers a lot of ground in terms of the scope, bliss and pain of a serious relationship and if you’re in one, have been in one or are yearning for one, the piece acts as both a lure and a red flag and such is the effect of the writing and performances that you’ll be dissecting it for a while afterwards – and also find yourself questioning whether you should recommend it or not to particular friends, based on your perception of how they’re managing love and life at the moment.
