With: Cintaine Schutte, Wessel Pretorius, Chrystal-Donna Roberts, Carlo Daniels, Amanda Strydom, Veronique Jephtas
Director: Janice Honeyman
Original text: Laura Wade
Translation: Francois Toerien
Costumes: Mariechen Vosloo
Set and lighting design: Wolf Britz
Sound track: Coenraad Rall
Choreographer: Adele Blank
Stage management: Keandri van Wyk
Production Management: Marie Vogts
A Toyota US Woordfees production
Tuis, ek’s liefie has all the ingredients of a top-notch comedy piece: a strong text, beautiful set and costumes, a witty and clever directing style and a stellar cast. Definitely an enjoyable watch! But sometimes one watches a play and feels that there is so much more to come from it. Theatre, like paint, sometimes needs to settle a bit. Certain paints gain more lustre, and sometimes we need to wait for the first coat to dry before we can go in with the top layer. In the same way, a good play sometimes needs to settle and then be refined a bit more to get it to its full potential.
Written by Laura Wade (and translated by Francois Toerien), the play has a concept that is slightly hard to buy into initially. It’s not absurd theatre or experimental in any way, but it did take me a beat to believe that a man and a woman living in the modern day and age would completely immerse themselves in the 1950s lifestyle as an escapist utopia. Once I made the leap, things started to fall into place. And although it is an extreme take, the idea is actually quite relatable. After all, the grass is always greener on the other side; the good old days were always the better, and who does not long for “simpler times”? So, what would happen if you actually constructed your own version of “the good life” in your home and marriage?
Enter Judy and Johny (Cintaine Schutte and Wessel Pretorius). These two met and fell in love over their shared passion for everything fifties, and over the past three years they have renovated their life and home with only vintage – car, fridge, clothing, furniture and even their television. They despise the shopping centre, they never go to the movies, and the biggest event of the year is the Jive dance festival, where Judy can dance to old classics to her heart’s content. But this lifestyle is not cheap, promotions don’t always come when planned and a single income household is becoming a serious issue – especially when Johny gets a new boss, who does not necessarily agree with the promise of his promotion.
Over the course of the play, we are placed inside their home, viewing their marriage mainly through Judy’s eyes. But visitors do come to call, and we get a sense of what they think about this ’50s dreamworld. We meet their friends (Chrystal-Donna, Roberts and Carlo Daniels), Johny’s boss (Veronique Jephtas) and Judy’s mother (Amanda Strydom). While it would be easy to think that Johny is the one who wants the old-fashioned wife waiting on him hand and foot, it soon emerges that Judy is the one tying her entire identity to this dreamworld. Johny is actually wishing for a bit more “realness”. As their entire make-believe house starts to crumble, deeper problems emerge. While Judy has glamourised the fifties as a time of high morals, kinder people and simple living, the reality was much uglier. Beneath the surface of pretty clothes and tip books for cleaning, there was a great deal of sexism, racism and deprivation. And just as there were problems under the surface then, there are also problems under the surface now.
So, what makes the play special? The first act is extremely strong. I loved the fast-paced, witty banter; the awkward moments as issues are raised and swept under the rug; the self-effacing parody scenes straight from a 1950s film; the set, costumes and props; the links and set changes done with fifties music and dancing actors; and the underlying themes that were strongly raised, but played against with energetic comedy. Janice Honeyman made strong directing choices that really bring the “fake fifties” world to life.
Unfortunately, the second act did not quite live up to the first. The energy dropped slightly, and the comedy at times seemed to disappear entirely. I did not feel it needed to be treated with such a serious tone – the issues raised in act one and handled as comedy had more punch.
The runtime was listed as two hours, including the ten-minute break, but it ran 30 minutes over and that seemed to be at least partly the result of pacing issues in the second half. Act two could also have been a bit more to the point in the dialogue. Many of the things that made act one so special were dropped – and it just lost a bit of spark. The play is already good and funny. I stayed engaged until the end and enjoyed it – a lot. But I believe it could be even better. What I hope will happen is that the second act gets edited and refined, tightening both the comedy and the timing – to keep that quirky continuity throughout. Perhaps they could keep the fifties-style transitions in act two, but have the changes become more disastrous: shoes dumped in a pile or dishes stacked in the sink. Just as act one showed the perfect facade, I would love to see physically the deterioration of Judy’s fantasy throughout act two. There is so much potential!
Theatre is always strongest when it has these two things: a clear message and a clever approach to telling it. This production has strong themes that are relevant today, and they are brought home in a new and interesting way. The fifties era is used as a fantasy world, allowing problems to be framed and viewed in a more objective way. These unsettling realities were true then and are still true (in some way, shape or form) today. It is by pointing out these parallels in this time-capsule home – which belongs to both eras, to a certain extent – that the audience can view these problems in a fresh way. With a great team, this is a very exciting new production. It has the potential to wow audiences for a long time to come. I can’t wait to watch it again once the paint has dried!
- Photographs: Provided
See also:
Tuis ek’s liefie by die Toyota US Woordfees 2023: ’n Instagram-resensie