THE RABBLE. Created and performed by Iman Isaacs and Richard September. Set design: Francois Knoetze. Illustration: Hanno van Zyl. Sound design: John Withers. Lighting design: Ryno Keet. Magnet Theatre.
MEGAN FURNISS reviews
I had my heart broken into a thousand pieces last night. I walked into The Magnet Theatre for a performance of The Rabble and I felt like I had walked into a live, 3D piece of WALL-E. The space had been transformed into a beautiful junkyard, with weird, dead seaweed creatures, a Table Mountain hovel home of plastic, a two-eyed street light and a looming, floating, shiny scaffold city of high rise.
The first piece of my heart broke off and shattered when ‘Shieda appeared on top of her soon-to-be-identified house. Both characters have extraordinary masks, and the minute I saw ‘Shieda’s face I knew I was in trouble. When she started moving and floating a pair of tiny baby shoes through and across a familiar miniature version of what is left of District 6 my breath became jagged. And The Rabble had only just begun.
Beautiful, intentioned physical work in an amazing set by Francois Knoetze, strange, unsettling sound by John Withers and moody lighting by Ryno Keet reveal the story of two people living in one of the holes in the ground in District 6. I drive past this scar in our city every day, and every day my heart lurches for the people who exist there, as well as those who have not yet been able to come back to the land they were forcibly removed from.
Daily rituals of life and domesticity
Here the two characters continue with the daily rituals of life and domesticity, even in the harshest of conditions. And yet, we know that they are doomed; doomed to a life threatened by dogs, and crime, and other people’s politics, and hunger, and finally doomed by what will come and eventually force them off their little piece of scavenged land. This story is based on true facts. People do live there, like that.
If I have to nitpick, some of the scenes are a little bit long and rambling, and there is sometimes a split focus with the two characters doing different things at the same time. I was also unclear about the “enchanted object” and what its powers were, but mostly I was completely engaged, and heartbroken, pretty much from beginning to end, with a few real laughs in between.
Iman Isaacs and Richard September have created a mostly word-free, magical-mask-work, physical theatre picture of Cape Town life that usually stays invisible. And it is heart breaking.
What was also heart breaking was that there was not enough of an audience there to see it. And you really should see this. Especially now, before Christmas, when we can be prompted to think about others and how they live.
What: The Rabble
Where and when: Magnet theatre, Observatory from 6 – 15 December 2017
Book: 021 448 3436
WS
