FRESH from winning an Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown for Woza Albert!, the Hexagon Theatre is presenting both The Island and their newest comedy piece, Tales From the Termite, at the Hilton Arts Festival, which runs from September 17 to 20 at Hilton College in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands.  

Actors, Mpilo Nzimande and TQ Zondi, team up again with two diametrically opposed shows: the classic tragic South African play, The Island, by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona on the one hand, and the wacky, satirical Tales From the Termite by well known South African writer and ex ‘Maritzburger, Greig Coetzee.

Coetzee is best known for the award winning White Men with Weapons and the amazing Johnny Boskak is Feeling Funny (also on at the Festival).

Can there be anything more delightfully hilarious than the combination of the high energy performance style of Zondi and Nzimande and Coetzee’s brilliantly astute comic penmanship?

The delicious Tales From a Termite combines physical theatre, satire and heaps of lunacy as it blends traditional folk tales with modern South African life.

This fast-paced trilogy of stories tells tales of various animals as they take on Minicab Taxis, Colonel Sanders and try to explain why dogs sniff each other’s behinds! This is satire of the most loony and cutting variety.

To find out more about The Island read my review of the play, when it was staged at the Hexagon, here:

Revisiting a classic: ‘The Island’ explores the ability of the human spirit to triumph in face of adversity and unjust system

WRITTEN by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, The Island is a reminder that even in the 21st century we need to fight for freedom of expression and argue against the power of the state over the individual.

I can’t begin to imagine the thoughts these three men must have had when they defied the laws of the time to stage this rebellious stage show in 1973. But stage it they did and, in 1975, their efforts were rewarded with a shared Tony Award for Kani and Ntshona.

This production is directed by Peter Mitchell, and despite the cavernous space of the Hexagon Theatre, remains an intimate work.

Mpilo Nzimande and T.Q. Zondi, last seen in Mitchell’s production of Woza Albert!, play John and Winston, two prisoners on Robben Island. The former was imprisoned for ­belonging to a banned organisation and the latter for burning his pass book in front of the authorities.

Both hail from the Eastern Cape, and their longing for their homes and families resonates sharply in the scene in which John pretends to call mutual friends. Watching Winston’s initial excitement fade into despair is gut wrenching.

The Island opens with the two men busy with the senseless task of ­digging, and then loading and transporting beach sand by wheelbarrow, a punishment from their warder, the unseen but ever present Hodoshe.

When the whistle blows, they are released from their labours, chained together and forced to jog back to their cell, where they can nurse their aching limbs. Soon, however, they are at loggerheads over Winston’s attitude to the warder and John’s plan to stage a scene from Sophocles’s Antigone for their fellow prisoners.

Winston isn’t taking the play ­seriously, won’t learn the story and is, frankly, less than happy that he has to don a wig and use metal cups for breasts to play the principal role in the Greek tragedy.

The tension between the two men increases when John learns that his 10-year sentence is being reduced and that he will be free in three months.

Nzimande portrays a man torn and confused. He wants to look forward to being back with his wife, children and family, but finds his joy tempered by the knowledge that he will be ­leaving Winston, who is serving a life sentence, behind.

Winston, meanwhile, cannot disguise his hurt, jealousy and anger, ­telling John: “Your freedom stinks … It’s driving me mad.”

But as the saying goes: what cannot be cured must be endured; and ­ultimately he agrees to perform the trial of Antigone. Like them, she has defied the laws of a tyrannical state to bury her ­brother, Polyneices, and has been sentenced to be interred alive in a cave.

Zondi shines in these final moments as Sophocles’s outcast heroine, pleading for justice, bemoaning ­Creon’s cruel laws, and eventually changing the word “cave” to “island”. He tells the audience that he is preparing to endure his “living death”. It’s a reminder that under apartheid life imprisonment meant just that for those who defied the system.

The Island is by turns funny, sobering, thought-provoking and leaves you amazed at the ability of the ­human spirit to triumph in the face of man’s inhumanity to man. Estelle Sinkins

NEED TO KNOW

Tales of a Termite is being staged in The Courtyard at Hilton College at 3 pm on September 19 and at 1 pm on September 20. Tickets are R60. Ages 12 and older.

The Island is being staged in the Drama Centre at Hilton College at 12.30 pm on September 19. Tickets are R100. Ages 13 and older.

Booking for both shows is at www.hiltonfestival.co.za/

For more information go to the website or like the Facebook page: Hilton Arts Festival. Follow the festival on Twitter @HiltonFest or download our free AppHilton Arts Festival for both Android and iPhone.