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THEATRE
Coming Home
Venue: Baxter Theatre, Main Rd,
Rondebosch. Tel: (021) 680 3989
Time: Mon - Sat @ 7:00pm
Price: R55 - R120
Performances: 2 - 25 Apr 2009
Genre: Drama
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Coming Home is Athol Fugard’s first sequel and follows on
from his acclaimed 1995 Valley Song, which was also his first
post-apartheid play. It continues the journey of Veronica Jonkers, played
by Bronwyn van Graan, who has left the farm where her beloved grandfather
(Terry Hector) lived to pursue her dream of a singing career in Cape Town.
Now, 10 years later, she returns with Mannetjie, her young
son, by a Mozambican migrant worker who is killed in a xenophobic attack.
After his death, carrying a painful secret and a heart filled with
disappointment, and with her own failing health (she is HIV-positive), it
is time for her to return to her home village as she strives to plant the
seeds of a new life for the boy.
Fiercely loyal to his mother, Mannetjie is a serious lad
who, like her, does very well at school, so it for this reason that
Veronica is so determined to give him a good start in life, and to ensure
that there will be somebody to care for him after her death.
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When Valley Song premiered at the Market Theatre in August
1995, Fugard performed in and directed the play himself. It went on to be
staged in the USA at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey, two
months later. It was performed at the Baxter Theatre Centre in 2003,
starring Ivan Abrahams and Quanita Adams as a young Veronica. The play was
also adapted into an opera for the 2005 Spier Summer Festival.
In the new millennium alone, eight of Fugard’s works have
been staged at the Baxter: Sorrows and Rejoicings (with Marius Weyers,
Denise Newman, Jennifer Steyn and Amrain Ismail-Essop) in 2001, Valley
Song in 2003, Exits and Entrances (with Sean Taylor and Jason Ralph) in
2005, Booitjie and the Oubaas (with Marius Weyers, Christo Davids and Mary
Daniels) and Sizwe Banzi is Dead (with John Kani and Winston Ntshona) in
2006, Victory (with Cobus Rossouw, Ameera Patel and Wayne van Rooyen) in
2007 and, last year, Hello and Goodbye (with Dorothy Ann Gould and Michael
Maxwell).
“South African theatre lovers have been privileged to see
all of Athol’s latest work here over the past eight years,” says Baxter
Theatre Centre CEO and Director, Mannie Manim. “Many of these productions,
like Exits and Entrances in 2004, Booitjie and the Oubaas in 2006 and
Victory in 2007 were world premieres.”
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