I turned away and she was gone
Written and performed by Jennie Reznek
If you have a child, you ought to see this.
If you have a parent, you ought to see this.
If you are both child and parent, well: Go.
Jennie Reznek draws on the Greek mythology to anchor her text, but the play is completely up to date and modern, with WhatsApp and e-mails sitting comfortably next to the mythological boat on the dark river to the underworld.
Know thine mythology
I was extremely grateful to have understood the mythological roots of the play and I would suggest that anyone who is keen to see this show – and one should – may want to read this very simple, very short, synopsis before going.
In the Greek mythology Persephone is the goddess of spring and her story goes: Kore is the daughter of Demeter. In true god-like fashion, Haides, King of the underworld, sees Kore, lusts after her and abducts her – with the help of Zeus. (“No” was no answer to a god.) Demeter is distraught and looks everywhere, only to learn the truth.
Then her fury is devastating and she refuses to allow the earth to produce any fruit or plants until her daughter comes back.
As a compromise Kore, now known as Persephone, is allowed to visit her mother annually – at which time spring arrives.
But this is more than myth
The truth about this show is that it simply uses the mythology as a reference. We are transported into a modern-day mother-daughter relationship. The setting is the Valley of a Thousand Hills in KwaZulu-Natal. The paradise is a modern, manicured garden with an over-chlorinated pool. The house has parquet floors – polished to perfection.
Young Kore hates all of this – even the floors mirror (pun intended) her flat chest.
Down at the bottom of the garden there is a pool with untreated water, there is forest untamed …
Our young Kore is drawn to the wild side.
Eina, but there is beauty and laughter
What happens when a child is abducted? How does a mother deal with the uncertainty, the nagging fear that accompanies not knowing?
You hand out posters, you make appeals on radio and television …
I found this part disturbing, and at least two people simply stormed out at this point. The reference to KwaZulu-Natal drove the dagger in deeper, as one of the girls supposedly abducted by Gert van Rooyen lived in Pietermaritzburg – my mother knew the family.
And yet, it is not all doom and gloom.
The mother of Demeter, somewhat senile, is lucid enough to have seen her daughter leaving willingly, dancing into the arms of a man in a blue Conquest. (Uhm, yes, it was a Conquest. Had to be.)
And many years later, when Persephone, no longer called Kore, returns, she tells of her life. She had skied down mountain slopes, ridden a motorbike, flown a plane, loved a man, loved a woman, borne a child …
I have a daughter
My daughter is at the age where I sometimes get a WhatsApp at 1 in the morning saying, “I’ll be sleeping out.”
Yes, fathers deal with this separation as well. You turn around and … she is gone into the arms of man you hardly know. He may drive a Corolla, but the conquest still is his.
And then it happens again with another man.
This play is not about Greek mythology. It is about parenting. And, funny, when I mentioned the age of my daughter to Jennie Reznek after the show, she pointed to her own daughter. Aha, I thought. Snap.
(For the father-daughter intertext, do read Tirza by the Dutch-American author Arnon Grunberg. The book has been turned into a movie as well.)
I have a mother
My mother is healthy and fit at present, but my grandfather died of emphysema and, gosh, the dying moments were so well done …
My mother is aging; in fact, so am I. That trip in the little boat across the river awaits us all.
But even here, in the dying moments of the play, Reznek had us in stitches.
It’s funny, it physical
The play deals with harsh issues, but the way Reznek uses humour and her body as instruments lifts the experience.
Physical theatre has codes similar to those of ballet. The body interprets and acts at the same time, while the mouth and the face may say different things. Yet, I found the play to be most poignant in those moments where she stepped out of her role, became an actor, and dealt wit the audience directly.
There is one wonderful moment where Reznek, now acting a tired actor, says to Themba Stewart, the production manager, “Themba, we need to speak to management about putting in aircon.”
He answers from the production desk: “You are management.”
Mirrors
Mirrors are important, yet subtle, parts of the text. I have mentioned the parquet mirroring Kore’s chest, but also look at the way Demeter mirrors herself in water moments before the water bursts and her child is born. The missing-child poster is turned into a little boat shortly after Kore finds herself in a boat to the netherworld.
There are other examples as well. Have fun looking out for them.
Water
Water is where birth takes place, water is the channel that takes Kore away, water is where Demeter’s death takes place.
Persephone needs water to kick-start spring.
The set is clever. Water is everywhere, all the time.
So?
I turned away and she was gone is by no means easy theatre, but it is rewarding. The delightful humour and the relevance of the production, anchored by the millennia of theatre that have come before it, makes this a play worth seeing.
It is not laugh-a-minute Shakespeare. Some may find the references to the mythology oblique. If one is unaware of the codes used in physical theatre, some of the movements may even be weird. Yet, rewards you will find. You may need to work for them, but then, Reznek works extremely hard on stage. I found myself marvelling at her body, admiring her beauty, and the way she transformed herself into so many characters.
But is it not bourgeois?
When the character mentioned the Valley of a Thousand Hills, political me expected that the text would delve into some of the atrocities that were committed against women during the eighties and early nineties; rape was a tool used by both sides of the political war.
Then it did not come. For a moment I found myself frowning at the rather “white” and quite upper-class issues that were raised.
Reznek and the Magnet Theatre Company are no strangers to working in and dealing with poverty and social upliftment, so why not in this play?
My own answer to my own question came from within the text. Four thousand years ago people would sit in a semi-circle watching actors perform the stories about the gods. That is how mythology was passed on; nobody wrote it down.
It was the common people who flocked to the theatre to see that their own little lives were not so different from those of the gods. It was Demeter, after all, who had had her daughter carried off by Hades. A modern-day version would be soapies that deal with the lives of the rich, the “bold and the beautiful” – all consumed by the commoner.
Reznek played into that. I am sure a working-class mum from Bonteheuwel or Atlantis would enjoy the play once she’s connected with Reznek’s character who yearns for a daughter that no longer wants to remain under her mother’s protective wing.
In Reznek’s play it is the mother of Demeter who saw and understood that Kore had actually left to join “the other” down in the bottom, down below, of her own, free will. It is an issue that I, a dad, have to deal with when I see my daughter leaving in a kwaito-pumping Corolla.
I could certainly relate.
Getting there and booking for it
This show was nominated for no fewer than four Fleur du Cap awards.
Reznek will perform I turned away and she was gone from 17 February until 12 March at 8 pm at the Magnet Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town.
The theatre is on the corner of Lower Main and St Michael’s Roads.
It is a small, intimate theatre, so seating is limited, and booking may be essential.
Tickets cost R130, with concessions for scholars, students, pensioners and groups of 10 or more at R65 a ticket.
There is a special Mothers and Daughters Two-for-One Special on 24 February and 2 and 9 March.
Bookings can be made at www.webtickets.co.za, or call Chiminae on 021 4483436 for more details and about Q&A sessions available.
For more information about the Magnet Theatre and Company, do visit their website: http://magnettheatre.co.za.
*
I turned away and she was gone
Directed by Mark Fleishman
Written and performed by Jennie Reznek
Choreographed by Ina Wichterich
Design by Craig Leo
Original music by Neo Muyanga
Voice coaching by Liz Mills
Stage management by Asiphe Lili
Production management by Themba Stewart
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