BWW Reviews: Revised and Improved RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS at the Artscape Still Not a Game Changer

The world premiere of Mike van Graan's RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS took place at the National Arts Festival earlier this year. Taking its cue from one the great protest plays of the past, Mbongeni Ngema, Percy Mtwa and Barney Simon's WOZA ALBERT!, the play is a response to the socio-political problems of contemporary South Africa, such as service delivery, corruption and slow transformation. Naturally, Nkandla is a focal point of the piece; in fact, it is the destination of the two-person delegation sent by the ancestors to investigate the state of South Africa two decades after the end of apartheid and the birth of democracy.

RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS begins with Steve Biko meeting an old lady upon his arrival in South Africa. Sick, with no readily available running water and no acceptable form of housing, the woman's circumstances alarm Biko, the first of many failures that will lead the character to question whether the sacrifice of his life was worthwhile. Biko is soon joined by Neil Aggett, a white activist in a black body. Nelson Mandela wanted a white representative on the delegation, Aggett reports; the Council of Ancestors reluctantly agreed that it could be Aggett if he were sent back in a black body. From thereon, the pair proceeds towards Nkandla, encountering a diverse range of characters along the way.

Although the basic outline of the play remains the same, RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS has been revised in the four months that have passed since its premiere. The new script and its associated theatrical production improve on the earlier version of the play. The rhythm that Mdu Kweyama's direction is able to contrive is consequently much more varied and subtle, creating sharply contrasting scenes that are more engaging for the audience. Actors Siya Sikawuti and Mandisi Sindo also have room to develop more clearly delineated characters, with Sikawuti truly excelling as Biko, and Sindo having an immense impact with his diverse multiple roles.

It is not only the script that has been streamlined. Francois Knoetze's design of the piece has also been simplified and is far more integrated with the action of the play, as is Kobus Roussouw's lighting design. His pink special for one of the framing devices of the piece, a series of news reports by a presenter named Sunshine Tshabalala (played by Sindo), creates a perfect moment each time it occurs.

Despite its refinements, RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS still struggles to balance its socio-political observations with its dramatic components and objectives. There are still many instances when the playwright's voice overshadows character with comic one-liners that pop up about the topics broached in each scene. The fissure lies between speaker and message, the difference between this play and its predecessor being, as I perceive it, that WOZA ALBERT! made meaning by showing audiences what was wrong with South Africa instead of telling them. Ngema, Mtwa and Simon used humour to serve the story, and the storytelling did the rest.

That might have something to do with WOZA ALBERT! being protest theatre first and foremost, with satire employed as a technique. RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS, by contrast, primarily handles its themes in a satirical fashion, an approach that has nonetheless long been used to expose society's shortcomings to itself. The best satire is built around the duality of serving as social criticism and prompting social transformation. The hurdle that many a modern satirical vehicle has trouble negotiating is the shift from observation to instigation this remains a stumbling block for RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS. Structurally, Van Graan has tinkered with the play's climax quite significantly. HE has removed a significant sequence in which South Africa's current situation was seen as the sum total of a series of unjust events, with Nkandla becoming a symbol that represented the unjustifiable condition in which the country finds itself today. That sequence had the potential to be the turning point for the play, but it failed to have the impact it should have in the original version of the play and is nowhere to be seen in the revised version.

So while RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS is a clear attack on the status quo, there is still no sense that the responsibility lies with the audience to shift what is wrong in the country, a very difficult thing to communicate in the age of armchair activism - perhaps even more so in the same week that the South African parliament has come to a precipice on which its integrity dangles precariously. When everything becomes a joke, things stop being so funny and people tend to wallow in despondence. Flight, not fight, presents itself as an alternative, and people need to fight for change. If the tipping point that will reverse that reaction is going to originate in the arts, South Africa needs a piece of theatre that has the kind of emotional impact that re-sensitises her nation into feeling outraged by the injustice that surrounds them. But RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS speaks to our heads and not our hearts, making it easier to shift our attention to other matters once the curtain falls.

RETURN OF THE ANCESTORS completed its run at the Artscape Arena Theatre last night.

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