In this metaphorical halfway point between the original Grecian script and a South African space, Andrew Buckland, lyrical as always and with a harrowing physicality, takes on the role of Oedipus. It’s the same character many know for having married his mother and murdered his father, but this tale begins after all of that has taken place and Oedipus is an old man, seeking a place to be buried.

But before embodying the decrepit, doomed titular role, we meet him as an eccentric professor giving a lecture on the very same play. He addresses us, half performing, half explaining, poking fun at “the meta”. He deems Oedipus at Colonus a thing of genius, but also japes “it’s not very #decolonialisation for me to say that”. “You’ll notice that I position myself precisely on the border of the sacred and the profane,” he proudly claims. 

Immediately his arrogance and ignorance despite being in a position of power is recognisable to South Africans and starts the allegorical cogs turning in the audience’s minds. He engages with cultural disrespect he does not understand nor try to understand, as if it were insignificant, and while there is comedy in his clashing with the characters we come to meet, it also sets up a darker comparison with South African political power dynamics.

Andrew Buckland in ‘Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles’. Image: Fiona MacPherson

Andrew Buckland and Jennie Reznek in ‘Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles’. The production promises to be a bold and innovative reworking of the classic play with a stellar cast made up of Andrew Buckland, Faniswa Yisa and Jennie Reznek and a chorus of interns from Magnet Theatre.
Image: Mark Wessels

Director Mark Fleishman explains that one of the main challenges of adapting such an ancient play is that one can’t expect that the audience will immediately know all the references and the backstory.

“In the professor’s speech he says let me tell you the whole story. Not only of this play, but of the play that came before this play in which the character is brought into being and then goes through all these terrible things and pulls out the eyes. This play starts where he’s already been wandering in the world and now he wants to die. To fill them in as quickly as possible, we had to have that exposition at the beginning.”

Another challenge in adapting the play to this context was how to approach language diversity. Rather than have line-by-line translations, only a few key lines spoken in isiXhosa are translated. There is a strong impression of the characters’ emotions during the Xhosa dialogue, which is more important than their exact words, but it is still a subversive decision. Fleishman explains the meaning and rationale behind the choice:

“A lot of tension is going on between an old play and a new play, the past is clashing with the present. And one of the things that clashes in our landscape is language. Who gets translated? Who has access? This play turns things on its head. The chorus actually throws the main characters out of the set! Bye bye now, we’re going to say the things we want to say.

“Those are the people that normally don’t have a voice, right? They would have to either just survive in the English environment or be cut out completely. Now, ironically, it’s the black audience members who understand the entire play and it’s the white audience members who are challenged. There are enough clues in the play to keep an English-speaking person understanding, but you can feel their frustration that they can’t catch everything, and that’s part of the play.”

The production is being performed in Flipside, where the audience is on the stage of the main theatre, but rather than having the audience on one side looking back, the performing space is set up as if it were a kind of road running between the two cities, with the audience on both sides. We witness the events of the play that take place in this rural space on the road, rather than in either city.

What this means is that the audience can see one another, and their experiences of events are a little different depending on which side they’re on. The performers also must act to both sides and avoid having their back to one when speaking. The acoustics of the stage are designed to throw the sound out to the audience in a normal configuration, but with this set-up, the sound rises towards the jungle gym of lighting and scene bars, so actors must be extra-mindful of projection and the microphone set-up was tricky to balance.  

As if the configuration of Flipside wasn’t challenging enough, the centre of that space is made sacred land, which is largely worked around. For most of the play, the chorus never sets foot in the space but works around it in fascinatingly choreographed patterns that are necessarily circular. The only characters that enter it are the power characters, which ironically are the ones who don’t respect it. 

The Magnet Youth Company in ‘Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles’. Image: Fiona MacPherson

The Magnet Youth Company in ‘Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles’. Image: Fiona MacPherson

There is clear political satire in the way that the power characters address that sacred space, spearheaded by Faniswa Yisa, who plays Theseus with vibrant charisma, and Jennie Reznek as Creon, absolutely domineering in her fascist uniform despite her stature, her presence and confidence commanding attention even as she tries to spare some for the other performers.

The chorus, graduates of the Magnet Theatre Youth Company, play a group of homeless occupiers unwillingly entangled in Oedipus’s story. Early on, we are encouraged to consider how the grander events of the “main narrative” impact on their world – the collateral damage. We hear testimonials about the daily struggles of their domestic lives, a cacophony of stories, intentionally overwhelming, that gives a collective voice to those “squatting in the vacancies of a broken society”.

The chorus frequently erupts into entrancing choreographed chaos, a stylistic choice that is used a little excessively, but in scenes such as their protests alongside palpitating music, their contemporary movement expresses a moving fury. In another powerful moment, the group members undulate in unison as they chant at the land. Land is a key issue in this rendition of the play. Fleishman explains: 

“It’s one of the very few extant Greek plays that takes place outside of a building, city or urban centres, in the kind rural space on the land. There’s a lot of attention paid to the quality of that land and its sacredness, and what’s been buried there are the Furies, the spirits of vengeance from an earlier system of justice before the imposition of Athenian democracy. So, the ruling powers have a lot invested in making sure that the Furies never return. 

“Essentially what we are trying to say with this is that because of the actions of people who grab that land, who occupy the land through investment or mining, etc, who just stumble into the space, we’re in a situation where the Furies come out again and we get cycles of violence that repeat themselves… When you’re taking something ancient like this and reimagining it, there are conventions that you’re making comments on all the time. Most people who come to see it are just reading it as an allegory of South Africa, which it is on some level, but it’s also something more complex that asks how to deal with the aftermath of catastrophe.”

With several layers of allegory imbued in the play, one may get somewhat tangled in the monologues as the show progresses. Still, the political satire is clear, there are several visually memorable moments, and with so many metaphorical links between the ancient text and the present, the audience is bound to leave with their heads swimming with drama and revolutionary sentiment. ML/DM

Oedipus at Colonus #aftersophocles is showing at the Baxter until 18 February.

You can contact We’re Watching via tevya@dailymaverick.co.za