Review: Will the Real WOZA ALBERT! Please Stand Up?

About ten years ago, I saw a production of WOZA ALBERT that added pre-recorded music to an already uninspired reading of Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon's visceral anti-apartheid play. The music neither elevated that production nor illuminated the text. Indeed, the presence of pre-recorded music in this WOZA ALBERT! was merely a symptom of a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of the piece itself. When Hexagon Theatre's production of WOZA ALBERT! at the Cape Town Fringe started off with some recorded township jazz, a warning signal was sounded, one that was sadly no cry of wolf. For even though this production was better than its decade-old predecessor, it never reached the heights of Prince Lamla's 2012 production, which proved beyond a doubt that more than three decades after its premiere, WOZA ALBERT! still has a great deal to say about the current socio-political and economic situation in South Africa.

Those problems include - but are certainly not limited to - poverty, access to education, inhumane working conditions, race-based exclusion from participation in economic systems and excessively punitive prison environments: when WOZA ALBERT was created, no target was spared when it came to exposing the injustices of apartheid. The central conceit of the play, what Morena, Jesus Christ, would do if the second coming were to take place in apartheid-era South Africa, is brought to a thrilling conclusion when Morena brings struggle heroes Albert Luthuli, Robert Sobukwe, Lillian Ngoyi, Steve Biko, Bram Fischer, Ruth First, Griffith Mxenge and Hector Pieterson back from the dead. By standing on the shoulders of our heroes and using what they taught us, the play says, we can all rise against a corrupt government. Even today, this scene has the power to inspire outrage, solidarity and action.

But not in this production.

In this production, the power of the final scene is undercut by the addition of a self-conscious "Woza Nelson!" This last utterance is akin to painting Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela's faces onto Gerard Sekoto's Husband and Wife or trying to alter George Pemba artworks digitally to pander to modern sensibilities. Under the guise of relevance, a work of art is undermined.

Like that utterance, Peter Mitchell's direction of WOZA ALBERT! is full of other choices that weaken the impact of the production. Besides the addition of the pre-recorded music, the lighting design is tricked up with blackouts and special effects that disrupt the fluid rhythm that is a trademark of the play in performance. The use of three table-like structures as a set rather than the traditional tea chests also adds little to the production. Mitchell's handling of the text itself is often too rushed: his staging never allows the actors to find multiple layers of meaning in a scene or gives them time to inhabit the quieter moments of the play fully. Even Auntie Dudu and the toothless old man are fast-tracked in his specious mission to prioritise pace above everything else.

If there is anything to praise in this production of WOZA ALBERT!, it is the performances of TQ Zondi and Mpilo Nzimande. As in TERMITE! TALL TALES FOR BIG PEOPLE, Hexagon Theatre's other offering at the Cape Town Fringe, the pair prove to be resourceful actors who invest their work with a great deal of integrity. One can only imagine what they could achieve in a production of this play that not only pushes them to their limits but also serves the text with the kind of complex interrogation that it deserves.

WOZA ALBERT! remains an incredibly powerful play. That it can withstand mediocre productions and still, more or less, manage to resonate with an audience is a testament to what Ngema, Mtwa and Simon achieved 35 years ago. When the real WOZA ALBERT! stands up, it takes no prisoners. It is a play that reminds us of the journey we have travelled, and the long way we still have to go.

WOZA ALBERT! plays its final performance at the Cape Town Fringe tonight, 7 October, in City Hall 1. Tickets are available through the Cape Town Fringe website.

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