Pick a box and make laugh, not war, with the incomparable Pieter-Dirk Uys, at The Playhouse Theatre, Somerset West today, Wednesday March 1, Thursday March 2, and Friday March 3.
Accompanying him on the stage will be his national assembly of satiricial cluster of charcters, some who have been with him since the 1980s.
“Does history repeat itself and turn tragedy into farce? Maybe on some minor levels of stupidity – thinking of the famed Gupta wedding fiasco and the Nkandla firepool gala. But looking at the characters and stories I have lined up, some old, some new, some borrowed, some blue, I don’t really believe that history does repeat itself in South Africa. Here it just rhymes: from apartheid to tripatartite; from amandla to Nkandla,” says Uys.
“The challenge of having 12 numbered boxes on the stage and remaining calm enough to throw myself at the mercy of the choices of every night’s audience is a bit crazy. There is usually no democracy on my stage. There I am the Vladimir Putin of theatre. I know what I do; where I do it; how I do it, and when I do it,” he says.
“Like that great old Springbok Radio show Pick a Box, the audience will choose a number and I will have to expose what is in that box. Not just that, but also ad-lib a connection to the next choice of box, which means that every performance will be diferent. As so many of the characters in the chorus line are our vibrant and inspiring politicians, maybe most members of the audience will call the show Kies ’n Doos!”
Evita Bezuidenhout, now in her 81st year, is the Sophia Loren of the gang. There’s the recently-discovered real Rubiocon Speech that PW Botha was meant to have made in 1985, and didn’t. Angela Merkel pops in after a bad hair day. Desmond Tutu brings tranquility and his divine quirkiness to a nation always in a state, while Jacob Zuma, after his State of the Nation recital, repeats that whatever they said he said, he never said.
Nelson Mandela celebrates transparency in his ANC government, while Mother Teresa tries to sort out who will be allowed to view the exhibition of cartoons that a great prophet will open at heaven’s gate. All that, of course, can only happen after the Koisan healer banishes the ghosts of Jan van Riebeeck and other colonial pickpockets from The Playhouse auditorium.That’s just a taste of what he has in store for the audience. Call 021 852 5182 for details.
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