FIVE STARS

The endless conflict between the sexes that the noted misogynist August Strindberg famously explored in his 1889 one-acter Miss Julie is expanded to include a racial context in writer and director Yael Farber’s stunning adaptation with Capetown University’s Baxter Theatre Centre, which, as Mies Julie, relocates the action to the South Africa of today.

Heavy on symbolism, even heavier on sex, this gripping 90 minutes of theatre has us gasping in admiration even as we are grasping for an understanding of what it is all about. Is it offering a message of hope or despair? “Welcome to the new South Africa, where miracles leave us exactly where we began.” Thus speaks black boot-cleaner John (Bongile Mantsai) contemplating what seems to be an impossible future with Julie (Hilda Cronjè), daughter of his white farmer boss (unseen). His observation follows a sweaty coupling, long awaited by both, on the kitchen table of the remote farmhouse that has been their home since childhood.

Except that for John it hasn’t. When he is not in the house polishing, his place is ‘out the back’ with the other black workers, who are denied electricity to cool themselves in the summer or relieve the winter chill.

He is clearly less comfortable with this than his mother Christine (Zoleka Helesi), the cook and general skivvy. Her labours over the years have led, she tells us, to the utter obliteration of the fingerprints that ought to have supplied unique identification when she cast her vote in the country’s first democratic elections 18 years earlier.

Still, she takes comfort in her Christianity, the consolation of which (alleged) is rejected by John as he hurls from himself in horror the Bible she is urging him to carry to Sunday service.

A powerful physicality is seen throughout in the movements, almost balletic at times, of both John and Julie — she posing provocatively in a way that makes it quite clear who is the prime mover in the sex.

Hovering around the action, in the sultry, smoky kitchen (designer Patrick Curtis), is the watchful ‘grandmother’ (Tandiwe Lungisa) representing the tribal ancestors feared and respected by Christine, if less by her son. She also contributes to the eerie music which, written by Daniel and Matthew Pencer and performed live by Mark Fransman and Brydon Bolton, makes an important contribution to the play.

Until Saturday

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