When you work as an arts writer, you start to take certain things for granted. Not for you, planning ahead or waiting in lines or buying tickets when going to the theatre; you swan in, pick up your comps and breeze past the hoi polloi, ready to start mentally penning your review.
In my case, this presumptuousness is aggravated by a bad habit of arriving just in time for curtain-up. So perhaps it was inevitable that, sooner or later, I would meet my own personal Waterloo: the inaccessible, overbooked, fuller-than-full house.
I was due to see Van Wyk — The Storyteller of Riverlea at the Market Theatre. By all accounts, however, the theatre has been besieged by enthusiastic audiences jamming in to see the show since the first preview last week. The official opening night was no different. No seat could be begged for love or money, even if you were “on the list”.
Is this a good omen for the Johannesburg theatre scene in 2019, a sign that Joburgers will turn up in droves to support new productions? One hopes so. But it’s more likely that this is simply the Chris van Wyk effect.
When he died in 2014, Van Wyk was one of SA’s best-loved writers; as a poet, memoirist, children’s author and more, he had established a wide readership in a country that is not especially receptive to literary texts.
Still, he remained a fundamentally modest and generous man, with no airs or pretensions. I couldn’t help thinking that he would have rather enjoyed the sight of a self-important theatre critic and other lost souls wandering, bemused, around the Market foyer and wondering what to do with themselves.
The Chris van Wyk effect is nothing new. Janice Honeyman, who directed the stage adaptation of Shirley, Goodness and Mercy — his account of growing up in the “coloured” community of Riverlea, wedged between Johannesburg and Soweto — recalls how people “queued around the block” to get in.
In one sense, the popularity of that book and production did Van Wyk’s reputation something of a disservice. He became described primarily as a raconteur, by turns humorous and poignant; a skilled spinner of yarns, always ready with a witty anecdote or character sketch.
Contrastingly, there are those who know him only for the iconic poem In Detention and think of him as a struggle poet. Others may only have encountered him through his adaptation of Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, or may think of him as a writer for young readers.
He was all these things, of course, but he was also more than the sum of these parts. Van Wyk — The Storyteller of Riverlea thus promises to add a few layers of complexity to the portrait of a multifaceted man.
I am half inclined to say that I don’t need to have seen this play to recommend it. Written and performed by Zane Meas, a veteran of South African stage and screen, it’s a piece of theatre that almost precludes critique insofar as it is billed as an homage: a tribute to a mentor and friend.
Meas was also born and raised in Riverlea. He began his career as an actor performing in a dramatisation of Van Wyk’s story when he was in high school. They would go on to collaborate on various projects.So, with Meas under the direction of Christo Davids, the show is almost a guaranteed success.
Yet this notion is one of the most dangerous clichés in theatre. Predictability is commercially appealing (and no doubt the Market Theatre is glad of it in this case) but can also be a death knell to appreciating creativity. There must always be an element of spontaneity, of the unknown and unpredictable; that’s what lends the performing arts their magic.
So I’ll go back to the Market, ticket in hand, and stand at the door of the Mannie Manim auditorium half an hour early if necessary. But, on the off chance that I don’t get in, perhaps a kind reader of Business Day who has seen the show could give this theatre writer a few pointers?
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