FORDSBURG’S FINEST. Written by 
Paul Slabolepszy. Performed by Paul Slabolepszy and Chi Mende. Directed by Bobby Heaney. Theatre on The Bay.
MEGAN CHORITZ reviews
Driving home from the theatre with my +1 last night we were a little shaken. We had both been moved by Paul Slab’s piece, Fordsburg’s Finest, me to tears. My friend said that the play was nostalgia in the true sense, and then looked up the root of the word. ‘The term nostalgia derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain). The literal meaning of nostalgia, then, is the suffering evoked by the desire to return to one’s place of origin.’ This is what Fordsburg’s Finest manages to tap into in a layered, emotional, and human way.
There are so many things I want to say. So many places I want to start this. So many places I want to end up. That’s the gift of great theatre. How it moves, shifts, fills the mind and soul with the things of our world. Indulge me. I am going to be all over the place here.
Freddy, a down and out used car salesman and Thandeka, an American looking for her familial roots, perform a tragic dance of almost connecting in this play about belonging, loss, the fragility of place and time, and what it means to be someone from somewhere.
The piece, set in 1996, and written soon after, is prescient. It describes how people feel now. Now is the time for this work to be seen and felt. Paul was onto something when he wrote it, and I don’t even know he realised that it would improve in meaning and poignancy as time passed.
Perfect in balance
Seeing Paul Slab back on stage is fantastic. He plays the people he creates with a combination of empathy and criticism that is perfectly in balance, and almost impossible to achieve when you are both writer and performer. It is his superpower. In Fordsburg’s Finest, the usual boytjie bravado of this white male is paper thin, exposing the frail man hanging onto the edge of everything with a used spark plug and a tin full of rusty nails. Here he is matched by the gorgeous Chi Mende (so happy to see this brilliant actress in Cape Town again) whose character’s journey is one that had me weeping. These two are going to only get better and better at being with each other on stage.
It’s the words. It’s the feeling of looking for and never finding the home we need, the comfort we imagine from a place that has hurt us, the brokenness and damage of a history that traps us in blame and stereotype and colour and gender. And it is all of this in two random people.
I need to share a story. During the worst of lockdown my friend in NYC and I organised play readings with South Africans and Americans on Zoom. We would meet on Saturdays and read plays and talk about racism and its impact on everything. Fordsburg’s Finest was one of the plays that was read. At the time we were reeling from the closure of all theatre everywhere and we were desperate. So, to see this piece on stage, in an actual theatre, in real time, with a set and lights and audience was doubly powerful.
Goes straight to the heart
Is this piece perfect? No. The set is beautiful but clunky, with an imaginary fourth wall that is continuously broken. There’s a lot of stuff. I didn’t need all the stuff. Sometimes the stuff got in the way of what was really happening. I don’t love the combination of hyper realism and pure theatrical licence. The little things: an already full glass of water, a very neat bird’s nest, a bucket conveniently placed for later. Not necessary. But hey, I was in the first audience ever of this piece that is real and live and goes straight to the heart. And I can’t imagine there will be a single person who isn’t utterly taken in by it. It has a very short run, so book now.
What: Fordsburg’s Finest
Where and when: Theatre on the Bay from 23 August to 10 September 2022
Book: Computicket
WS
