South Africa: Mda’s ‘Girls’ Turns Protest Theatre
Christina Kennedy
Grahamstown — A literary work worth its salt can be transplanted into any era and still work. If the themes remain relevant, it matters little when and where the action takes place.
This is why the stage adaptation of Zakes Mda’s And the Girls in Their Sunday Dresses, directed by Princess Mhlongo, goes down a treat - it could be set today, or 15 years ago, or 30 years ago, and it remains entertaining, challenging and invigorating.
Mda published this novel in 1993, but one wouldn’t know it, looking at the two characters and the situations they face while waiting in a queue to buy cheap rice.
You see, this is protest theatre in a sense, but it is not overt in its politics - rather, it encourages us, through finely balanced dramatic and comic moments, to consider how to react to the human dilemmas facing us all.
Be it under apartheid, during the pre-democracy euphoria, or today, most people have experienced abuse of some variety.
Our two female protagonists - “the Woman” (Lesego Motsepe) and “the Lady” (Hlengiwe Lushaba) - have both been trodden on by men.
But “men” in this sense can be construed not as an anti-male diatribe but as referring to the system in general.
Riches to rags In And the Girls Motsepe plays a very different character to her role as spoilt urban princess Letti Matabane in Isidingo.
Here, she is a simple domestic worker, but is nobody’s fool and her demure, “frumpy” appearance belies a feisty temperament.
Lushaba is a treat as “the Lady”, a brassy, blowsy prostitute.
Resigned to accepting her lot passively, she takes a chair with her wherever she goes, so she can “relax while waiting for something to happen”.
As in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the process of waiting turns out to be more significant than the anticipated result of the waiting.
The two women discover they have more in common than initially meets the eye and, through sharing their respective stories and heartbreaks, they resolve to renounce their victimhood, stop waiting and seize control of their circumstances.
“You don’t wait for the revolution; you make it happen,” says the Woman.
The play has evolved and improved since opening at the State Theatre some months ago, and the two actresses have grown into their roles.
They charm and cajole the audience and have them eating out of their hands in this sparkling play.
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