AMSTERDAM FRINGE ACCOLADE CRAZY IN LOVE. Written and devised by Andrew Buckland and Liezl de Kock, with Andrew Buckland and Liezl de Kock. Directed by Rob Murray. Design Jayne Batzofin. PIET SE OPTELGOED. Written and directed by Liezl de Kock, with Liezl de Kock and Lexi Meier. At City Hall from September 25 to 28. TRACEY SAUNDERS previews
GOOD things come in threes, so the adage would have us believe, and the trio of Buckland, De Kock and Murray have proven it true as their production Crazy in Love was announced as the Best International Production at the Amsterdam Fringe Festival on Monday.
No mean feat considering the programme included Best of Fringe productions from the New York and Stockholm Fringe Festivals.
Anneke Jansen, the artistic director of the Amsterdam Fringe, said that "the two actors in the play are absolutely beautiful and create a completely unique universe with the seemingly simplest of gestures". De Kock has certainly mastered the art of the physical gesture and together with Murray has studied drama at Rhodes University with Buckland as their lecturer.
Aside from their collaboration on Crazy in Love, Buckland is the supervisor for De Kock's master's thesis, which is presented as Piet se Optelgoed. Quite a talented triumvirate and one that audiences will be able to see at the inaugural Cape Town Fringe Festival later this month.
Crazy in Love was inspired by John Irving's Until I Find You and is a sojourn of loss and longing.
It debuted at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown last year and was performed again to full houses this year. The piece combines the quirky and bleak sensibility of Irving with the gritty realism of Athol Fugard. Buckland is one of the finest physical theatre performers in the country and in his role as Leon he embarks on a journey to find his erstwhile fiancée who left him at the altar with his newborn daughter Ginny (De Kock).
Their lives are chaotic and fuelled by alcohol, and Leon drags his daughter across the country in vain. Despite never appearing on stage, Ginny's mother looms large and Leon's obsessive love for her is a compulsion that verges on insanity
The synergy between Buckland and De Kock on stage is profound and mesmerising and they keep you spellbound until the final breath.
They live a nomadic existence and stumble from town to town with the only sense of permanence found in the names of each place that Leon has inked upon his skin.
While he becomes a living roadmap in search of lost love, his daughter grows increasingly frustrated. Standing on the threshold of womanhood she envisions a life that is more than an endless search. Batzofin's design is integral to the piece and adds to the dreamlike and chaotic quality of the play Her set design earned praise from the Amsterdam Fringe judges with Jansen saying: "The set is ingeniously constructed out of a wide range of attributes that can be transformed into a hut to sleep in, a shrine for the dead or your worst childhood monster nightmare."
As neither Ginny nor Leon seem to know where their next port of call is, one remains unclear about the next set transformation until it appears before you.
The ubiquitous staple of most South African landscapes and many an itinerant traveller, the shopping trolley takes centre stage and is more than just a convenient carrier of the contents of their lives.
The play is an ode to absent love of all types, and while Leon hankers after a romantic love lost Ginny is in search of a maternal love she has never had. Her mother myth is as all consuming as her father's obsession and the play is a poignant portrayal of the power of the unseen and unrequited over the present.
De Kock has a knack for the dark and the delicious.
In Kardiavale, the cabaret clown noir show, her Onnie was possibly one of the most heartbreaking and unforgettable characters I have ever seen on stage and in Piet se Optelgoed, she evokes the macabre mischievousness of a pied piper who calls "weggooi-kinders" from their beds to her kitchen.
Part ritual, part reckoning her escapades explore the notion of loss; of children and childhood.
In Crazy in Love, her life is carted in a trolley; in Piet se Optelgoed her life is carried on her back, literally and metaphorically.
While neither of these productions conforms to the happy-everafter, fairy-tale ending, they do embody the archetypes of true storytelling and are beguiling, lurid and essential additions to your festival schedule.
Preview by: TRACEY SAUNDERS
Source: CAPE TIMES