SANTA’S STORY. A personal story delivered by Aviva Pelham. Director Janice Honeyman. Designer Dicky Longhurst. Lighting Mannie Manim. At Theatre on the Bay.
SHEILA CHISHOLM reviews
Robert Burns, Scotland’s Bard, is credited with being the first documented poet/writer to note ‘man’s inhumanity to man.’ The line is taken from his 1784 Dirge – Man Was Made To Mourn…. “Many and sharp the numerous ills, Inwoven with our frame! More pointed still we make ourselves, Regret, remorse, and shame! And man, whose heav’n-erected face The smiles of love adorn, Man’s inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands mourn!”
Santa’s Story, relayed through her daughter Aviva Pelham, resonates with everyone forced to flee their home, leave family, country settle somewhere foreign, learn a new language and possibly never reconnect with those they love. It’s a story that makes us weep for displaced persons in our own country as much as any other.
The horrors of war
A natural clannishness doesn’t help. And if you happened to be Jewish during the Nazi regime, man’s inhumanity to man, woman and child knew no bounds.
With arrangements by musical director Matthew Reid (clarinet and keyboard), plus Petri Salonen (violin) and Nicky Jansen (keyboard, guitar, accordion and flute) and sung by Pelham, Santa’s Story is as much a musical evening of heart-aching Yiddish songs as a memory trip of Pelham’s mother’s life.
Dicky Longhurst’s furniture places us in Santa’s German home and Jacques’ Polish home. Furniture, lampshades, battered suitcases and a “his master’s voice’ gramophone are typical period pieces. As is Pelham’s ‘sweetheart’ hair-do and dress.
Starting with her parents and childhood, the story also covers the rise of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, Santa’s flight to Spain, France and finally Rhodesia to marry Jacques Pelham whom she had never met. It’s a tale highlighting the horrors of war, the unspeakable atrocities perpetuated in concentration camps, displacement and finally love.
An incredible voice
In one of the earliest Santa’s story presentations, Santa, then 89, came on stage and sang. What an incredible voice, which hearing again on recordings reminded what a gracious old lady Santa was. Pity her daughter’s tendency to over dramatize lost sight of that.
To end with a quote from Alan Paton – There is only one way in which one can endure man’s inhumanity to man, and that is to try in one’s own life to exemplify man’s humanity to man.
Your last chance to see Santa’s Story at Theatre on the Bay is on Saturday 14 October at 5pm and 8pm.
What: Santa’s Story
Where, when: Theatre on the Bay, until 14 October, 2017
Book tickets: Computicket
Theatre on the Bay: https://www.pietertoerien.co.za/
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