BWW Reviews: Visually Arresting PIET SE OPTELGOED a Mesmerising and Perplexing Experience

There is a great deal going on in the mind-scape that defines PIET SE OPTELGOED. A piece of theatre that defies labels, it could be described as post-modern feminist visual theatre of the absurd. With so many genre elements at play, including the use of puppetry, it should come as no surprise that PIET SE OPTELGOED is challenging viewing, teasing out its single situation into multiple layers of ambiguity, the decoding of which is passed on to the audience.

A basic description of the piece might begin with the central character, Piet, a kind of mythic bogey(wo)man who is used to frighten naughty children into good behaviour. Gleeful and grotesque, she cavorts through a landscape that at once suggests a coastline, a polluted repository for any and all kinds of debris and the domestic spaces that were (and still sometimes are) used to validate a certain kind of feminine experience, but which simultaneously marginalises, limits and disempowers women. These are the circumstances in which devisor and designer Liezl de Kock explores Piet's abject existence, subverting the structure of a "day in the life" to give us a "life in a day" of her protagonist. De Kock warps time and space to create a darkly fantastical world in pursuit of symbolism that communicates, on one hand, the subjection of women to social convention, men and the environment and, on the other, the incredible agency that women have to overpower these three elements. Neither way of life is without cost.

De Kock's performance as the central figure is mesmerising. Her ability and technique to create communicate Piet's experiences through the physical vehicle of a Jacques Lecoq style bouffon is first class. She completely shifts from one emotional state to the next, first as she is battered about by the world around her and then as she bends that same world to her will. Her power struggle is played out in microcosm with an animal-like pet-servant - one of the monikers associated with the unseen figure, brought to life by Lexi Meier, is "aasvoël" - as well as in the primary narrative in which a corpse-like puppet (also manipulated by Meier) washes up on the shores of Piet's existence.

Directorial composition for PIET SE OPTELGOED is by Rob Murray, who keeps the range of imagery created in the piece arresting. Working with De Kock's design and narrative strategies, Murray uses continual shifts in rhythm to keep the audience engaged in his theatrical interpretation of her ideas. A throbbing soundscape also contributes to those rhythmic shifts, with sound effects playing against the rustling of the paper and plastic that makes up the set itself.

Thanks to De Kock's performance and Murray's direction, engaging cognitively with PIET SE OPTELGOED is a laregely successful enterprise. It is not difficult, given our contemporary proclivity for magical realism and grotesque fantasy, to navigate the piece's ambiguities and emerge from the theatre with a sense of meaning or to appreciate it for its ingenuity and fine performances. One might simply accept PIET SE OPTELGOED on its own terms, but it is equally open to the reasoning of an interpretation in which the piece forges links with whatever may be lurking in the back of one's own mind. At one point, for example, I considered how clearly PIET SE OPTELGOED resonated for me as a post-modern deconstruction of the interior landscape of Athol Fugard's Lena.

Engaging with the piece emotionally is more difficult. The piece attacks one's head-space very clearly, but while there is a direct proposal at a heart connection, I left the piece with my heart-space untouched. There is so much going on in PIET SE OPTELGOED, so many techniques used to distance one from its emotional undercurrent, that by the end there is a clear sense, as the lights go up in the theatre, that many audience members are left perplexed by what they have seen. For myself, I felt alienated by my bewilderment, clear only on the fact that there was a chasm between what I thought and how I felt about the play.

PIET SE OPTELGOED completes its season at the Cape Town Fringe Festival tonight (29 September), with a performance at 21:30 at City Hall 2. Tickets cost R60. Bookings for the production, which has a 16+ age restriction, can be made at www.capetownfringe.co.za and at the Cape Town Fringe Box Office.

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