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THEATRE
 The
Tempest
Venue: Baxter Theatre, Main Rd, Rondebosch. Tel:
(021) 680 3989.
Time: Mon - Sat @8:15pm
Price: R80 - R150
Performances: 15 Jan - 6 Feb 2009
Genre: Drama
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A new production of William Shakespeare's magical last play,
The Tempest, a collaboration between The Baxter Theatre Centre and the
Royal Shakespeare Company, is set to be a highlight of Cape Town’s bumper
Summer season.
Janice Honeyman will direct multiple award-winning actors
Sir Antony Sher as Prospero and John Kani as Caliban. The three foremost
South African theatre blue-bloods bring two of the country’s most
celebrated actors on stage together for the first time.
This unique production is filled with African ritual, music
and dance and will feature a totally South African cast which will be
announced at a later stage. After its world premier at the Baxter Theatre,
the production will transfer to the UK for a run at the RSC’s Courtyard
Theatre in Statford-upon-Avon from February 14 to March 14, 2009.
Honeyman, who previously directed Sher in
the acclaimed 1986 RSC production of Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye, and
Kani in his play Nothing But the Truth, explains how it all came about. “Tony
(Sher) and I sat around a barbeque one mid-summer evening in 2000 in
London, and I broached my "African" Tempest to him. It's our play! It's
African! It explores colonialism, paternalism, the master/servant
relationship, corruption - trickery and plotting - reconciliation and
forgiveness, and most of all the appropriation, not only of land, but also
of cultural and religious beliefs! Doesn't that sound like home? Add to
that, indigenous African music and the astounding visual images that are
traditionally African and we can give The Tempest a terrifically exciting
interpretation. The mid-summer night was blue and flashing with ideas and
electricity. We had to do this!”
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This is more than a homecoming for RSC
Associate Artist, Sher. He said: “The director,
Janice Honeyman and I have been discussing this production for several
years and I’m thrilled that the RSC is now making it happen, along with
the Baxter, which is the leading theatre in Cape Town (my birthplace) and
arguably in the whole of South Africa. In Shakespeare’s time, witchcraft
and magic were part of society, but this is no longer true in the modern
world, except in certain places. Our plan is to use African ritual to
release the magic in the play. From a personal point of view, I’m
extremely pleased to be working with Janice Honeyman again. She directed
me in the RSC production of Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye. It’s also been a
lifelong ambition of mine to be onstage with the legendary South African
actor John Kani. So this feels like all my dreams coming true.”
Knighted for his services for acting and writing, and an RSC Associate
Artist, Antony Sher first worked for the RSC in 1982. His many roles for
the company have included his award winning performance in Richard III as
well as the title roles in Tamburlaine, Cyrano de Bergerac and Macbeth. He
played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and Iago in Othello with Sello
Maake Ka-Ncube in the title roe. In 2005 he directed Fraser Grace’s play
Breakfast with Mugabe for the RSC, and his own play The Giant which
recently premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London. He played Disraeli
in the film, Mrs Brown alongside Judi Dench. His other credits include
Stanley and Primo for the National Theatre, both of which transferred to
Broadway and both won major awards. Antony Sher's books include the
memoirs Woza Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus in South Africa, (co-written
with his partner, the director Gregory Doran in 1997), Year of the King
(1985) and his auto-biography Beside Myself (2002). He last performed at
the Baxter Theatre Centre in January 2005 when his one man show, Primo
sold out before it opened, and for which he won the Fleur du Cap best solo
performance Award.
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