Die Kortstondige Raklewe van Anastasia W - Leon de Kock | Author

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South African Theatre Journal 69
Now, however, Du Preez says, certain parties (including some ‘short-sighted’ and
‘jealous’ theatre-makers) are wondering out aloud why it is necessary for time and
money to be spent on productions of this kind. ‘It seems that as theatre-makers, we
cannot afford to alienate our audiences. As a theatregoer, however, I am sick and
tired of sentimental [spookasem] theatre, and of the second-hand, dangerous
nostalgia that gets dished up to ‘‘put bums on seats.’’’ Du Preez concludes:
Anastasia W’s shelf life in South Africa is likely to be short. This piece may well be a
critical success; audiences may turn their backs on the production. Yet I still feel that it’s
an incredibly important work in Afrikaans and for South Africa. The piece was clearly
born out of rage. It makes a person angry, for many reasons. And that’s where the power
of theatre lies, and the power of this play. It tears something loose in one. It attacks
everyone and everything and for good reason. It protests. It screams and it makes a
noise; it makes you giggle and laugh out aloud, but it’s never quite so stupid as to try
and prescribe to anyone. (Du Preez 2011)
Looking at reception in which appreciation of the play’s strengths begins to shade into
criticism of its density, obliquity and its various manifestations of excess, one finds
some cautiously critical reviewing, one prominent instance of outright condemnation,
and several reports of disaffection both among the audiences of the play and the
Afrikaans intelligentsia. Diane de Beer (2011), writing for the Independent Group of
newspapers, is one of the few newspaper reviewers who felt emboldened enough to
express a sense of dissatisfaction about what one might call the ‘moral tone’ of the
play. Referring to the fact that ‘many [people] left the auditorium,’ she added:
‘If I could wish for anything different, it would be that Van Niekerk’s anguish about
violence takes me on a journey of some kind’ (De Beer 2011). De Beer then compares
Anastasia W unfavourably with Lara Foot’s Tshepang, 17 which she says ‘gave insight’
and ‘[forced] the country to face its own role in the tragedy’ of baby rape. In the case of
Anastasia W, however, ‘[i]t is as if Van Niekerk wanted to walk you through her anger.
She opens the door, but then doesn’t take the next step.’
De Beer’s critique, implying as it does that Anastasia W lacks a moral compass,
lacks ‘direction,’ walking one through blind anger instead of taking one on a
‘journey,’ and lacking the ‘next step,’ was to become a familiar refrain the play is a
blast of fury, an ‘immoderate’ rage without aesthetic balance and closure, and
without any real sense of insight, or, dare one say it, hope. Such a response is more
explicitly voiced in a deeply disaffected commentary on LitNet by well-known actor,
producer and director Albert Maritz.
Maritz (2011) opens his blisteringly cynical account by recording the fact that
Anastasia W won both the Beeld-Aartvark prize as well as the AngloGold Ashanti/
Aardklop-Smeltkroes prize. Maritz mockingly characterises the festival audiences
who fill the front rows to see a play like Anastasia W as the ‘converted.’ While the
people in the front rows clap their hands for the director’s vision, the musical
director’s genius, and the beautiful performance art evident on stage, members of the
audience (especially older people) start walking out as a result of the play’s ‘crude
language, [and] its vulgar images,’ he writes. The actors are passionate, the lighting is
brilliant, the singing is a beautiful ‘chant,’ but even more people are starting to walk
out, writes Maritz. ‘They’re walking out because of the content,’ he says, ‘or because
the disgust at South Africa’s darkest moments is created without any attention to
boundaries, especially the boundaries of time.’ 18 Marthinus Basson, he comments