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AndrewKing
Posts:16
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| 04/20/2006 9:47 AM |
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In
'The Hall of Judgement', Class Five tackled one of the oldest and trickiest of
ethical problems, namely, why should we bother being good when bad things happen
to good people and good things happen to the bad? The play's answer is the
familiar moralists' claim that the injustices of the current life are
straightened out by forces bigger than us in the next life, so it's best to stay
on the straight and narrow for fear of what will happen beyond the grave. How
convinced Class Five's are in real life by this line of argument can probably
only be answered by their teacher, Fezile Mdzinwa, but they seemed to
believe it while on stage, which is probably what matters.
I am told that
the whole class learned the entire script so the most important issue must be
the cast's performance as a collective. Thankfully, aided by sensible stage
direction, costumes born of parental labours of love, and a classic Philip
Nangle soundtrack (live!) the performance as a whole was great. Not only the
basics such as knowing lines, catching cues, moving coherently around the set
and so on but also the finer points, including (for the most part) speaking
clearly and making it sound like they knew and meant what they were saying. And
all this despite it being (on the night I went) a particularly hot and hazy
Scarborough late afternoon, where the idea of being in a sweaty Community Centre
rather than on the beach seemed the height of madness.
Being the bad guy
offers more dramatic scope than being the good guy, and Shanti Stewart as Hotep
and Devlin Bruton as the man who tries to have a widow evicted from her land
both rose to the occasion. Abigail Falck gave a creditable performance as Ani,
though quite why Ani never checked the box of jewels before showing it to the
Pharaoh I suppose we will never know. Clearly Ani should have been listening to
his daughter Maati, played with zest by Lauren Bremner, who knew what Hotep was
up to from the beginning, suggesting serious gender issues in the Ani household
that he might want to think about while he whiles away the centuries in the
Fields of Peace…
by Gregory Mthembu-Salter
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