Making Gatsby Great
Review by Gill Gimberg

Staging a play of a such a well-known and venerated novel as The Great Gatsby is a challenge.  But over the past few years The Mechanicals have shown that they're prepared to take on any challenge - and rise to it. It didn't surprise me, then, to find they'd grabbed hold of Peter Terry's beautifully balanced script and breathed as much life into it as Scott Fitzgerald did into his novel. It's what I've come to expect from The Mechanicals.
The Great Gatsby is true theatre: art, impersonation and performance. But then, so is Gatsby. And this is what director Luke Ellenbogen and his cast succeed in showing: that Gatsby is the true artist, the great, in the rich and facile society he inhabits.
The set is simply brilliant / brilliantly simple - as artificial and ephemeral as the society - with a few props and smart use of lighting (Ellenbogen) serving to move between West Egg and East Egg, 'town' and the Wilson's garage somewhere on the road to New York.
Real live musicians, Kurt Haupt on piano and Lucy Holgate on vocals, provide the music which permeates the entire performance. In schizophrenic Mechanicals fashion, Haupt doubles as musical director and Holgate shows that she can act - and dance - as well as having a superb singing voice.
The acting is also what I've come to expect from this team: startlingly good, and Gatsby is brimming with meaty roles for actors to get their teeth into.
Emily Child's Daisy is a fey creature: almost transparent at times, neurotic, unreliable and manipulable. She is the perfect foil to Nicholas Pauling's Tom: vital, brusque, rude and rich, every move he makes driven by barely controlled violence. Jordan (Kate Liquorish) manages to be both limp (the bored society girl), vital (the tennis player) and unscrupulous. She also has a superb haircut and some nice clothes. Daisy has some nice clothes too, and a feather in her hair. These are careless people who, as Nick says, retreat into their money when the consequences of their actions home in on them.
Nick's (Andre Laubscher) is the restrained voice of reason, but Laubscher also succeeds in portraying him as an earnest young man, a tentative suitor, a malleable accomplice and, finally, a clear-sighted judge of human character. He is never overbearing - a perfect narrator who epitomises his father's words: 'Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'
Scott Sparrow's Gatsby is enigmatic and hard to pin down, likeable - but not quite, honest - but not entirely, a flawed character who, with his casual, throw-away shouldering of Daisy's careless act, becomes a martyr to this shallow social set. At all times he is utterly convincing, Old Sport.
Adrian Collins lives up to his classy performances of last season. He is a particularly versatile actor who swaps from George's tragic manliness to Wolfsheim's rough-diamond wheeler-dealer character (plus a few other minor characters) with seeming effortlessness. Deborah Vieyra plays an equally convincing Myrtle (and one of Gatsby's party hangers-on) and Mikkie-dené le Roux, a young actress definitely worth watching out for in the future, puts in excellent performances as Michaela and an inebriated party girl.
All in all, these are some of the strongest performances I've yet seen.
Ellenbogen's directing is strong; he has captured the enticing atmosphere of the wealthy East Egg set and juxtaposed it with the uncertainty of the times - 1920s, prohibition, the after effects of WWI and the difficulty ordinary people experience in making a living. He also succeeds in getting star performances out of his cast and keeping the play moving along at a good pace. You will not be bored.
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Izim'elincinci / The Ogreling
Review by Gill Gimberg

Theatre for children - serious theatre, that is - is a rarity in South Africa. So it was a privilege to attend the opening night of The Ogreling at the Baxter, which is so much more than just a kids' play, along with children of all ages, from five to, well, at leastseventy.
Written by Canadian Suzanne Lebeau, The Ogreling has been beautifully adapted for South African audiences, with a local feel to it, lovely music and an evocative set.The story deals with an archetypal theme of the traditional fireside story or ntsomi: a bad man who eats little children. Guaranteed to appeal to all children. Including this one.
The ogreling, Simon, is played by Thembani Luzipho, who gives an amazing performance as a six-year old. Everybody, young and not-so-young alike, loved the opening scene where he is getting ready for his first day at school. The incongruence of a grown man behaving like a child was universally appreciated and the laughter was spontaneous and genuine. A consummate actor, Luzipho never once moves out of his character, taking the child with him as he portraysthe young ogre's journey to self knowledge and mastery of his shadow self - truly grown-up themes: the inherited violence lying beneath his lovable nature, the uncertainties of being different from his peers, the fear that he was the cause of his father's desertion of the family and his ultimate test in the (metaphorical) desert.
His mother is played by Nonceba Constance Didi who succeeds in bringing to life a mother's tenderness, sorrow, powerful protective instincts and fears for her child. A versatile and totally competent actress, she shows with frightening clarity the challenges faced by this particular mother: a son who has inherited his father's dangerous genes, the need to protect and yet know when to let go, and her fears for the wellbeing of the community they live in. More than any mother should have to cope with, but too close for comfort to the situation many South African mothers find themselves in.
The play is enhanced by superb shadow puppetry, designed by Daya Heller and operated by Beren Belknap. The shadows appear larger than life, as a child would experience the plants and animals around them, and move the story along very effectively with a mesmeric quality.
The Ogrelingis directed by experienced producer, director, teacher and writer Yvette Hardie, assisted by Ntomboxolo Makhutshi. Direction is strong but not overbearing and the directors have succeeded in getting the most out of the actors and keeping the story alive throughout the 70 minutes the play runs. Particularly interesting were the repetitive tunes, the feeling that this small family is not alone, and the way in which everyday life is juxtaposed with the world of the supernatural.
The set and costume design (Illka Louw) is perfect for this type of play: realistic and simple, but with every last detail attended to.
This is definitely a play to see, no matter how old you are and even if you don't have a convenient child to accompany. It is truly African theatre, despite its Canadian beginnings, and definitely works on more than one level: For the child, this is a 'coming of age' story and a reflection of the scary and challenging situations children face; for the adult it is a chance to escape into an ancient story-telling tradition, while at the same time being faced with some very adult situations.