‘N PANDOK SE LIEFDE. Finest of the Zabalaza Fest 2025. Written by Lauren Snyders. Directed by Samuel Jumat. Performed by Lauren Snyders and Dealan Fredericks. Baxter Studio.
MEGAN CHORITZ reviews
I was already tired and emotional when I sat down and looked at the beautiful set of ‘n Pandok Se Liefde, in the Baxter Studio. Both actors were already on set, performing repetitive actions, Hettie making and remaking the tiny bed, and Bobby counting coppers in a tin. While the set portrayed the inside of a pondok, or shack, with a certain artistic stylisation, there was no doubt about the setting. A shack.
And then the play unfolded. And I got sadder and sadder. This piece is a beautifully crafted dissection of the utter frailty of poverty, and the dissolution of relationships and sanity after violence and trauma smash into what human beings should not ever have to consider a home. A shack cannot keep you safe. Not from the rain, or the dark, or those that will come and hurt you.
Goes to the core
Lauren Snyders has written out acute pain. It is tangible and woven through each careful word and gesture of both characters. It is a play of tenderness and memory, and connection, and bodies and minds and hearts that cannot survive the brutality of being poor and vulnerable.
It is not a hopeful play. How could it be? For people living on the very edge of survival, life is a cruel and endless joke played on them by a malevolent, racist capitalist god. Part Beckett, part Chekhov, with a brush of Fugard, this piece is a layered and heart-breaking ritual of fear, and kindness, and grief, and resentment and inevitability. And it perfectly articulates the most terrible world of the poor.
The performances are complex and quite marvelous. So big. So open. So vulnerable. So deeply painful. This makes for uncomfortable watching. It is devastating to witness. But it goes there. To the core.
Lauren’s play reminds us how far we still need to go before we are human.
What: ‘n Pandok Se Liefde
Where and when: Baxter Studio, 9 to 13 September 2025
Tickets: Webtickets
WS
