Ursula Strauss
posted 26 October 2006

Kay Adshead's new play is about white guilt. Told through two narrators, the belligerent elderly lady, Jennifer, who waits at the bedside of her dying husband, and the black girl/boy who is the source and extractor of her guilty secrets. Bones are found on her lands and people gather to witness the extraction of these 'ancestors'. As the play progresses we begin to suspect that Jennifer may know more about the bones than she is letting on.

Slightly dodgy South African accents aside, both characters embrace their parts. In particular, Sarah Niles is both disturbing and affecting as the Boy and suitably quirky as the mysterious maid, Beauty. Whilst the play stays at the level of the whimsical - the maid has mysterious powers that allow her to heal people and convinces the woman she can cure her dying policeman husband - it carries the storyline along in an entertaining way. But the play really cannot survive a twist which then renders the preceding action utterly mundane. Rather than a bold stripping away of fantasy, it comes across more on the level of 'It was all a dream'. And means that Jennifer's final moment of revelation becomes rather banal.

Whatever else this play might be, it is not, as the blurb states, 'A ruthless excavation of South Africa in 2006'. Try 1995-6, the years of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (The TRC allowed the population to report abuses conducted under Apartheid, and abusers were given amnesty in exchange for a truthful account of their wrongdoings). Kay Adstead, in an interview on theatreVOICE, admits that her experience of South Africa is secondhand - and in fact based on information from friends who left South Africa at this time.

As someone who has firsthand experience of South Africa and has made frequent visits over the last few years, I found this play dated in the way it centralises the white person and their experience. The black characters seem to exist to take Jennifer on an emotional journey in which she learns not to repress important truths. The dilemmas of such a character would be marginal to the point of non-existence in the new South Africa. Unfortunately, the happy moment of interracial reconciliation and forgiveness is fading into memory, having been replaced with new concerns such as crime, corruption and illegal immigration. The current focus of the nation is better reflected by recent plays such as Township Stories and the movie Tsotsi. Whilst this does not render a play such as this invalid, it does spotlight some of its inadequacies, chief of which is the fact that this is a familiar story which has been told before, and rather better.

Till 4 November 2006