On the first day of Lent the curtain lifted on one of the best non-commercial theatre productions we have seen in this province for a very a long time – and, there were not ONE Naledi judge present to bear witness to a night of thespian genius.
Were they sleeping off their hangovers following the Awards night 48 hours ago? Who knows. But, what I know and am grateful for - and what they do not know - is that tonight's audiencve shared the first night thrill of a magnificent staging of this classic work and also the debut of 10 new young serious stars as we haven’t seen young stars shining on our stages in many years.
This Arthur Miller play uses one of the most awful chapters in human history – in 1692 in the United States town of Salem in Massachusetts, this strange piece of history about witch hunts and hangings played itself out and, the story found its echoes again in post- WWII America
as American fear of Germans and Japanese was transferred onto the communist Soviet Union. Though the Soviets had been their allies during the war, Americans began to see them as a threat. The Soviets had a nuclear bomb and were aggressively expanding their influence into Europe and Africa. China was soon taken over by communists.
The American Communist Party, other left-wing organizations, and minority groups - including African-Americans, Native Americans, and various immigrant groups - became targets of suspicion, surveillance, and infiltration. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's trial and execution for conspiring to steal secrets of the atomic bomb convinced many Americans that communist spies were among them. Propaganda films such as "Red Nightmare" and "Duck and Cover" further fueled this anxiety. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 expanded the battle, authorizing financial support for foreign governments fighting communism.
The Rosenbergs stoically maintained their innocence throughout the length of the trial and appeals. They were executed by the electric chair on June 19, 1953. Up to this day nobody really knows If indeed they were innocent but what we do know is that the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and that Ethel Rosenberg was convicted on the most flimsy of evidence to place leverage on her husband; and neither deserved the death penalty.
It is against this background that Arthur Miller revisited the Salem Witch Trials and delivered to the world a classic allegory in which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are represented by the character of John Proctor and Elizabeth Proctor. They too, in the end, go their deaths as innocent victims of a public hysteria in which many men and women were sent to the gallows for the alleged and ipso facto crime of being witches. What makes this shameful period off atrocity even more shocking is that these brutal and unfounded punishments for an invisible crime all stemmed from the allegations of a handful of teenage girls.
On the other side of the world and hundreds of years later, in our own beloved country, in the Eastern Cape and the Limpopo province , an epidemic of witchcraft accusations have prevailed since the demise of Apartheid. This has led to mock trials (kangaroo courts) and has seen refugees feeling for their lives – destroying not only families but also crippling society in general.
I am only mentioning Alby Michael's, the director of the – if otherwise, I will have to list dozens of names on whom praise needs to be bestowed. Michael’s conceptualization of the play, having the same actors play different characters using masks as in the classic Greek theatre, is to say the least, breathtaking. The production and lighting design by Kosie House of Theatre are breathtakingly simple an dramatic. Just to mention one of the many moments of genius: The prison bars in the last act becomes glockenspiel, evoking the sounds of church bells – and cleverly one is never quite sure for whom the bells are tolling - for the accusers or the accused?
Music for the production was specially composed and arranged by Dawid Boverhoff – and, the genius of the direction, design and lighting also runs through every bit of the magnificent sound that is created in tandem with the drama. The director/ composer also uses the device of a fiddler on the stage – the fiddler playing little melody lines around the characters as the play evolves, bringing to mind memories of The Devil Went Down to Georgia, The Devil's Fiddler and A Fiddler's Tale among many similar works.
I can continue heaping praise on this tour de force of an entire company but, I need not. It will speak for itself, for in this production the devil is to be found in the exquisite detail and a mighty fine reading of Arthur Miller!
On the first day of Lent the curtain lifted on one of the best non-commercial theatre productions we have seen in this province for a very a long time – and, there were not ONE Naledi judge present to bear witness to a night of thespian genius. Were they sleeping off their hangovers following the Awards night 48 hours ago? Who knows. But, what I know and am grateful for - and what they do not know - is that tonight's audiencve shared the first night thrill of a magnificent staging of this classic work and also the debut of 10 new young serious stars as we haven’t seen young stars shining on our stages in many years.
This Arthur Miller play uses one of the most awful chapters in human history – in 1692 in the United States town of Salem in Massachusetts, this strange piece of history about witch hunts and hangings played itself out and, the story found its echoes again in post- WWII America as American fear of Germans and Japanese was transferred onto the communist Soviet Union. Though the Soviets had been their allies during the war, Americans began to see them as a threat. The Soviets had a nuclear bomb and were aggressively expanding their influence into Europe and Africa. China was soon taken over by communists.
The American Communist Party, other left-wing organizations, and minority groups - including African-Americans, Native Americans, and various immigrant groups - became targets of suspicion, surveillance, and infiltration. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg's trial and execution for conspiring to steal secrets of the atomic bomb convinced many Americans that communist spies were among them. Propaganda films such as "Red Nightmare" and "Duck and Cover" further fueled this anxiety. The Truman Doctrine of 1947 expanded the battle, authorizing financial support for foreign governments fighting communism.
The Rosenbergs stoically maintained their innocence throughout the length of the trial and appeals. They were executed by the electric chair on June 19, 1953. Up to this day nobody really knows If indeed they were innocent but what we do know is that the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct and that Ethel Rosenberg was convicted on the most flimsy of evidence to place leverage on her husband; and neither deserved the death penalty.
It is against this background that Arthur Miller revisited the Salem Witch Trials and delivered to the world a classic allegory in which Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are represented by the character of John Proctor and Elizabeth Proctor. They too, in the end, go their deaths as innocent victims of a public hysteria in which many men and women were sent to the gallows for the alleged and ipso facto crime of being witches. What makes this shameful period off atrocity even more shocking is that these brutal and unfounded punishments for an invisible crime all stemmed from the allegations of a handful of teenage girls.
On the other side of the world and hundreds of years later, in our own beloved country, in the Eastern Cape and the Limpopo province , an epidemic of witchcraft accusations have prevailed since the demise of Apartheid. This has led to mock trials (kangaroo courts) and has seen refugees feeling for their lives – destroying not only families but also crippling society in general.
I am only mentioning Alby Michael's, the director of the – if otherwise, I will have to list dozens of names on whom praise needs to be bestowed. Michael’s conceptualization of the play, having the same actors play different characters using masks as in the classic Greek theatre, is to say the least, breathtaking. The production and lighting design by Kosie House of Theatre are breathtakingly simple an dramatic. Just to mention one of the many moments of genius: The prison bars in the last act becomes glockenspiel, evoking the sounds of church bells – and cleverly one is never quite sure for whom the bells are tolling - for the accusers or the accused?
Music for the production was specially composed and arranged by Dawid Boverhoff – and, the genius of the direction, design and lighting also runs through every bit of the magnificent sound that is created in tandem with the drama. The director/ composer also uses the device of a fiddler on the stage – the fiddler playing little melody lines around the characters as the play evolves, bringing to mind memories of The Devil Went Down to Georgia, The Devil's Fiddler and A Fiddler's Tale among many similar works.
I can continue heaping praise on this tour de force of an entire company but, I need not. It will speak for itself, for in this production the devil is to be found in the exquisite detail and a mighty fine reading of Arthur Miller!
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