BWW Reviews: Power of SANTA'S STORY Diluted by Sentimentality and Nostalgia

The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town is currently playing host to a return season of SANTA'S STORY, following a run in Johannesburg and preceding two overseas stops in London and Helsinki. Based on the memoir of Santa Pelham, a German-born Jewish woman who was forced to live as a refugee in a Europe spiralling downward into the Second World War, fleeing from Germany to Spain and then to France, before finally making a trip to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to marry a man to whom she had been introduced by letter. Performed by Pelham's daughter, Aviva, an esteemed singer and actress from the world of opera and musical theatre, this piece of storytelling attempts to illuminate Santa's past as a narrative that resonates with the present climate, which is summed up in the programme notes as one characterised by 'racism, xenophobia, lost years and broken dreams'.

SANTA'S STORY starts off with Aviva as Santa, reminiscing about her birth as she sits down to write her memoirs. This is followed by recollections of Santa's childhood and her relationship with her family, a group whose existence was characterised early on by a pattern of being separated and reunited. As Santa becomes a young woman, she has to make peace with her identity, with doubts that arise in regard to her religious beliefs, with life on a new continent as the wife of a stranger and with the loss of her parents and brother during the Holocaust. The story is punctuated with songs and underscored by music played by an onstage Klezmer band, endowing the tales with a sense of historical and cultural context. Upstage, images of the real Santa and of the places in which she lived are projected onto a screen, along with translations of the song lyrics.

Scripted by Aviva herself, in collaboration with director Janice Honeyman, from a final manuscript of Santa's memoirs that was edited by Gabi Sulcas, who is Aviva's daughter, there is a strong sense of familial catharsis in SANTA'S STORY as it appears on stage. But while the story and the themes upon which it touches are engaging and worthy, the tale loses something in the telling in this translation of SANTA'S STORY into a piece of narrative theatre.

The problem is that the stage production - despite the aforementioned assertions to the contrary - plays as though it is not predominantly about racism, xenophobia, lost years and broken dreams, the very stuff that is at the heart of Pelham's memoirs. SANTA'S STORY, the play, is about storytelling, a concept explicitly introduced in the title of the play and set up in the opening and closing framework of the show in which Aviva re-enacts the writing of Santa's stories. But where is the conflict in the act of the telling of this story? If there was any, it is not apparent in the play, and the true conflicts inherent to a personal history as rich as this one fade into the background as the play skips cursorily from episode to episode in Santa's life, remaining hidden under a veil of nostalgia and sentimentality.

Were the play to tackle head on, say, Santa's struggle with God, the joys and challenges of learning to know your husband only after your wedding celebration or the complexities of survivor guilt, SANTA'S STORY might be the piece of theatre it sets out to be. Moments that are sunk into rather than glossed over are the foundations of the best scenes in the play: one involves a pair of letters by which two women's fates will be decided and the other features an exiled Santa singing a song about her mother, who she misses dearly.

Whatever the problems the play might have, Aviva's performance as Santa is impassioned as she communicates a story that is naturally very close to her heart. Her voice still soars as she navigates her way through both traditional and period songs in German, Spanish, French, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. There is something about her that reminds one very much of a cross between Leslie Caron and Julie Andrews, and it would be wonderful to see her return to the legitimate musical theatre stage in a role like Madame Armfeldt in A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC or Heidi Schiller in FOLLIES. The band that accompanies Aviva onstage - Matthew Reid on clarinet, sax and keyboard, Petri Salonen on violin and Nicky Jansen on keyboard, guitar, accordion and flute - play wonderfully, whether in support of Aviva's vocals or beneath her speech. They are an indispensible part of this production.

The physical production of SANTA'S STORY reflects a great deal of thought and care. Dicky Longhurst's design of the stage space offers just the right mix of realistic detail and abstract symbolism to create a sympathetic environment in which this story can be told and Mannie Manim's lighting evokes well the sense of period in which the bulk of the play is set.

Like the adaptation of SANTA'S STORY itself, Honeyman's direction only partially works in this production. While there is a deep investment in the subject matter, the play has curious sameness of rhythm as it shifts repetitively from monologue to song and back again. As such, while some fascinating moments are achieved, the overall experience leaves one feeling somewhat underwhelmed by its "and then... and then... and then..." structure.

The experience of SANTA'S STORY as a theatrical performance is thought-provoking, not only in regard to its subject matter but also as an exercise in theatre-making. While the story clearly deals with meaningful issues and ideas, the production handles them in all too pedestrian a fashion. Perhaps the familial bonds at the heart of this production work as much against the play as for it. Maybe there is no way not to lose objectivity about the story one is telling in the midst of such a profound engagement with one's own history. Possibly, sometime in the future, when fresh minds, hearts and hands come across SANTA'S STORY, the piece of theatre that it could be will emerge. For now, it is a pleasant and life-affirming, but all too frustratingly safe piece of work.

SANTA'S STORY runs until 26 May 2013 at The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. Performances take place from Tuesday to Saturday at 8pm and on Sunday at 3pm, with no performances on Fridays. Tickets can be booked at Computicket or through the Fugard Theatre box office on 021 461 4554.

Photo credit: Jesse Kate Kramer

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