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The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Breakfast With Mugabe: biting political drama finally arrives in South Africa
I am standing outside the hallowed walls of the Market theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg. This is the place where Athol Fugard – surely the greatest of South African playwrights and one of my all-time theatre heroes – staged plays including Hello and Goodbye and The Island. The latter was co-written with fellow theatre greats, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Now it's the turn of a little-known English writer and his play Breakfast With Mugabe. This is, as they say, one of the days of my life. In 2001 my script felt like urgent work. Elections loomed in Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe was reportedly unleashing terrible violence in his bid to cling to power. To many in the UK 'President Bob' had long been a monster. But what, I wondered, created the monster? The play finds Mugabe holed-up in State House, pursued by the bitter spirit of a long-dead comrade. Denied help by traditional healers, the former liberation leader reluctantly turns to a white psychiatrist. Cue the unravelling of history. Interest in Breakfast With Mugabe was immediate, and persistent. The late (and much missed) Antony Sher directed a Royal Shakespeare Company production that travelled from Stratford in 2005 via Soho theatre to the West End in 2006. An audio version flourished on BBC Radio 3 and the World Service; a second UK production followed, while in the US a production by Two Planks & A Passion (directed by David Shookhoff) clocked up 100 performances on New York's 42nd Street. Another production was staged in Berkeley. Since then, Mugabe has died and Zimbabwe bumps along in comparative peace. So a new production – especially in South Africa – came as a surprise. According to Greg Homann, the idea blossomed slowly. In 2022, Greg – whose theatre work spans the US, UK and South Africa – was associate artist at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham. Then his 'dream job' became a reality. Returning to South Africa as artistic director of the Market theatre, one of the first artists he encountered was a young director fast building a reputation as an innovative theatre-maker. Calvin Ratladi had, sometime in 2016, chanced on a copy of Breakfast With Mugabe. The play stuck with him; would the Market produce it? Sadly, that plan stalled. Then, earlier this year, Ratladi was named Standard Bank's young artist of the year for theatre. This award is quite a gong (its first winner was Richard E Grant). It brings with it support for a creative project – and an opportunity was glimpsed. If Ratladi still held a torch for his Mugabe project, the Market theatre would host. Remarkably, he was as keen as ever. A theatre polymath and renowned disability activist, for him this four-handed, pressure-cooker play of psychology and spirituality presented exciting new challenges. If this partly answers the 'why here, why now?' question, why do Ratladi and Homann think the play resonates in the new South Africa? For Homann, the play typifies the Market's longstanding commitment to 'an entwining of politics and theatre' – a tradition vital to the theatre's co-founders Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, and to one of the many playwrights they championed, Athol Fugard, who sadly died in March. Recent shows at the Market have examined the life and legacy of other significant South African figures, among them Winnie Mandela and Robert Sobukwe. As Ratladi points out, Breakfast With Mugabe extends this tradition; a play about a hero of the liberation movement – this time from outside South Africa, and one whose legacy is hotly contested. This is especially true among Zimbabweans, an estimated one to three million of whom now live in South Africa. Hearings into the Gukurahundi in Matabeleland in the mid 1980s have only just begun in earnest. In that massacre, Mugabe ordered his army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to suppress his party's opponents. An estimated 20,000 Zimbabweans were murdered. At the production's first night in Johannesburg, it was clear the play retains its bite. Themba Ndaba and Craig Jackson lock the president and his shrink in a terrible struggle for supremacy; Gontse Ntshegang shines as the manipulative Grace Mugabe, drawing howls of laughter for her indiscretions as 'the First Shopper', while Zimbabwean-born Farai Chigudu exudes menace – and barely controlled violence – as the bodyguard/secret policeman, Gabriel. With the first three performances sold out, audiences (as audiences will in South Africa) whooped, gasped and sighed at every zinger or put-down – verbal or physical – delivered by the cast. I've been lucky. The play has almost always been well received by audiences as well as critics. In the US however, what I believed was a play about colonial culpability was celebrated as an essay on interracial conflict, pure and simple. Do Americans struggle to see their country implicated as a colonial power? In South Africa by contrast, it's the impact of colonial oppression that deafens. Post-liberation rewards – the justice so long awaited by black South Africans – never materialised for many. How the country's current government can ever deliver redress is a hot-button political issue for President Cyril Ramaphosa – and one critical to the future of South Africa's 63 million inhabitants. And what does Ratladi's unexpected, bracing new production offer the playwright? A lesson. Whatever we may think we've written, a play can – simply by shifting its context in time and space – make us think and feel something new. It is after all play – a living, unfolding, mutable thing. Like all true play, its punches do not always land where expected. Breakfast with Mugabe is at the Market theatre, Johannesburg, until 10 August
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Breakfast With Mugabe: biting political drama finally arrives in South Africa
I am standing outside the hallowed walls of the Market theatre, Newtown, Johannesburg. This is the place where Athol Fugard – surely the greatest of South African playwrights and one of my all-time theatre heroes – staged plays including Hello and Goodbye and The Island. The latter was co-written with fellow theatre greats, actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. Now it's the turn of a little-known English writer and his play Breakfast With Mugabe. This is, as they say, one of the days of my life. In 2001 my script felt like urgent work. Elections loomed in Zimbabwe, and Robert Mugabe was reportedly unleashing terrible violence in his bid to cling to power. To many in the UK 'President Bob' had long been a monster. But what, I wondered, created the monster? The play finds Mugabe holed-up in State House, pursued by the bitter spirit of a long-dead comrade. Denied help by traditional healers, the former liberation leader reluctantly turns to a white psychiatrist. Cue the unravelling of history. Interest in Breakfast With Mugabe was immediate, and persistent. The late (and much missed) Antony Sher directed a Royal Shakespeare Company production that travelled from Stratford in 2005 via Soho theatre to the West End in 2006. An audio version flourished on BBC Radio 3 and the World Service; a second UK production followed, while in the US a production by Two Planks & A Passion (directed by David Shookhoff) clocked up 100 performances on New York's 42nd Street. Another production was staged in Berkeley. Since then, Mugabe has died and Zimbabwe bumps along in comparative peace. So a new production – especially in South Africa – came as a surprise. According to Greg Homann, the idea blossomed slowly. In 2022, Greg – whose theatre work spans the US, UK and South Africa – was associate artist at the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham. Then his 'dream job' became a reality. Returning to South Africa as artistic director of the Market theatre, one of the first artists he encountered was a young director fast building a reputation as an innovative theatre-maker. Calvin Ratladi had, sometime in 2016, chanced on a copy of Breakfast With Mugabe. The play stuck with him; would the Market produce it? Sadly, that plan stalled. Then, earlier this year, Ratladi was named Standard Bank's young artist of the year for theatre. This award is quite a gong (its first winner was Richard E Grant). It brings with it support for a creative project – and an opportunity was glimpsed. If Ratladi still held a torch for his Mugabe project, the Market theatre would host. Remarkably, he was as keen as ever. A theatre polymath and renowned disability activist, for him this four-handed, pressure-cooker play of psychology and spirituality presented exciting new challenges. If this partly answers the 'why here, why now?' question, why do Ratladi and Homann think the play resonates in the new South Africa? For Homann, the play typifies the Market's longstanding commitment to 'an entwining of politics and theatre' – a tradition vital to the theatre's co-founders Barney Simon and Mannie Manim, and to one of the many playwrights they championed, Athol Fugard, who sadly died in March. Recent shows at the Market have examined the life and legacy of other significant South African figures, among them Winnie Mandela and Robert Sobukwe. As Ratladi points out, Breakfast With Mugabe extends this tradition; a play about a hero of the liberation movement – this time from outside South Africa, and one whose legacy is hotly contested. This is especially true among Zimbabweans, an estimated one to three million of whom now live in South Africa. Hearings into the Gukurahundi in Matabeleland in the mid 1980s have only just begun in earnest. In that massacre, Mugabe ordered his army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to suppress his party's opponents. An estimated 20,000 Zimbabweans were murdered. At the production's first night in Johannesburg, it was clear the play retains its bite. Themba Ndaba and Craig Jackson lock the president and his shrink in a terrible struggle for supremacy; Gontse Ntshegang shines as the manipulative Grace Mugabe, drawing howls of laughter for her indiscretions as 'the First Shopper', while Zimbabwean-born Farai Chigudu exudes menace – and barely controlled violence – as the bodyguard/secret policeman, Gabriel. With the first three performances sold out, audiences (as audiences will in South Africa) whooped, gasped and sighed at every zinger or put-down – verbal or physical – delivered by the cast. I've been lucky. The play has almost always been well received by audiences as well as critics. In the US however, what I believed was a play about colonial culpability was celebrated as an essay on interracial conflict, pure and simple. Do Americans struggle to see their country implicated as a colonial power? In South Africa by contrast, it's the impact of colonial oppression that deafens. Post-liberation rewards – the justice so long awaited by black South Africans – never materialised for many. How the country's current government can ever deliver redress is a hot-button political issue for President Cyril Ramaphosa – and one critical to the future of South Africa's 63 million inhabitants. And what does Ratladi's unexpected, bracing new production offer the playwright? A lesson. Whatever we may think we've written, a play can – simply by shifting its context in time and space – make us think and feel something new. It is after all play – a living, unfolding, mutable thing. Like all true play, its punches do not always land where expected. Breakfast with Mugabe is at the Market theatre, Johannesburg, until 10 August
TimesLIVE
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- TimesLIVE
Does a single ‘Tsotsi'-like act of integrity define Mabuza, or a lifetime of scandal?
In the Oscar-winning movie Tsotsi, a thug and his gang terrorise ordinary people in the streets of Johannesburg. The thug (played by the recently departed actor Presley Chweneyagae ( in a story by Athol Fugard ( and his friends steal, mug, beat, knife and hijack their way through the city heartlessly and with impunity. ..
The Citizen
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Citizen
WATCH: ‘The world has lost a true gentleman' – Tributes pour in for actor Wiseman Sithole
Sithole's passing comes as he was preparing to act out Athol Fugard's play, titled 'Boesman and Lena'. South African actor Wiseman Sithole has died, prompting a flood of tributes to the 51-year-old, who many remember from his work on shows like Suidooster and Summertide. 'It is with the greatest sadness that we share the shattering news of Wiseman Sithole's sudden passing. We are honoured to have worked alongside this legend of an actor,' read a statement from his agency, Emma Ress Management (ERM), confirming his passing. ERM said it would communicate details concerning his funeral and memorial service, upon his family's instruction. ALSO READ: 'A profound loss': Fashion world mourns Sun Goddess Vanya Mangaliso 'RIP my brother' Fellow actor Lee-Ann van Rooi paid tribute to Sithole, reminiscing on their time working together and sharing a smoke during breaks. 'We finally got to work together for a whole week… had plans to work together later in the year…. a colleague and friend from the time when Stokvel and Fishy Fashions were 2.5 day shoot rotation swing sets. For TV2,' wrote Van Rooi. 'We minded our own business but now and again would enjoy a car park smoke and a story. I don't smoke anymore and this is the last of your story. R.I.P my brother.' ALSO READ: SA mourns death of playwright and author Athol Fugard Preparing for Boesman and Lena Sithole's passing comes as he, together with Van Rooi and others, was preparing to act out a play written by recently deceased Athol Fugard, titled Boesman and Lena. The story is centred on the struggles of a coloured couple, Boesman and Lena, as they are forced to wander from place to place, highlighting the human cost of apartheid's oppressive policies. In the upcoming play, Sithole was to depict Outa, an old Xhosa man in the story. 'In as much as it addresses some political challenges in South Africa, it is also about love between this couple, Boesman and Lena. I'm privileged to be one of the people who would do this version of the play, it is interesting we will be doing it in Afrikaans,' said Sithole recently in a video. Director of the play and actor Christo Davids said he was deeply saddened by Sithole's passing. 'I'm deeply saddened and shocked by this news. My deepest condolences to his entire family and those close to him,' said Davids. 'The world has lost a true gentleman. Committed to his craft with unwavering dedication to his fellow actors and colleagues. NOW READ: WATCH: Ladysmith Black Mambazo honoured with special award celebrating 65 years in music
News24
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- News24
Athol Fugard remembered at National Arts Fest with stellar performance of ‘The Island'
Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona's classic play The Island was performed at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda. The actors and director of the play said it was an honour to put on the production in memory of Fugard, especially with Kani present in Makhanda. The festival takes place from 26 June to 6 July 2025 in Makhanda, Eastern Cape. Fifty years ago, theatre legends Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona were honoured at the prestigious Tony Awards. Their double-bill The Island and Sizwe Banzi is Dead received nominations for Best Play and Direction of a Play, with Kani and Ntshona jointly winning the Best Actor award. The Island takes place in a prison inspired by Robben Island. Two cellmates prepare for a performance of Sophocles' Antigone. One cellmate learns that his sentence has been reduced from 10 to 3 years, with only a few months left to go. The other cellmate still has a long sentence ahead of him. The Island was performed at this year's National Arts Festival with Sizwe Banzi is Dead also on the programme. In light of Fugard's death, this felt like a very necessary programme inclusion, especially since he, Kani and Ntshona all hail from the Eastern Cape. READ | Aldo Brincat's 'The Moon Looks Delicious From Here' dazzles once again Director Xabiso Zweni and actors Fiks Mahola and Anele Penny brilliantly brought Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona's text alive once again and said it was an honour to perform it this year at NAF. Zweni said they originally wanted to do the play in commemoration of the Tony Award, not for Fugard's death. Kani was also in attendance at this year's arts festival. 'When he passed away, it gave the production such a boost that we wanted to commemorate him, his memory and the work he, John Kani and Winston Ntshona did during apartheid,' Zweni said. The director praised Fugard for being able to 'go into the township, work with talent and go overseas when the country's laws did not permit it.' 'That's why it's such a great honour to pay tribute to Athol Fugard.' Joel Ontong/News24 Zweni believes that though The Island is an apartheid-era play, the themes still resonate with modern audiences because of the brilliant storytelling. 'The work is timeless; they've written such a beautiful work. The themes of economy and equality will always resonate with younger people as well.' Zweni also said that Fugard was foundational to his theatre education, as with many other theatre makers in SA. 'He's always going to be there in the shadows as one of the fathers of South African theatre.' Actor Anele Penny, who plays Winston in The Island, said, 'Nobody fills anyone's shoes in theatre,' but they wanted to continue the legacy of their artistic predecessors. 'We feel very much honoured to do The Island, as well as Sizwe Banzi Is Dead next week,' he added. 'These doctors [referring to Fugard, Kani and Ntshona] are the pioneers of theatre,' Penny said. 'They represent us even today because some see the change, but others are still in the dark, looking for the change that was promised.' 'So it's a double celebration for the 50 years of the Tony Award and also saying farewell to Doctor Fugard,' Penny added. Actor Fiks Mahola, who plays John, also said being in the production is more than an honour. He continued: 'I left the entertainment industry, and I thought I successfully retired. Then someone said to me, 'I know your work ethic, I know your capabilities, I know what you can do, and I think you would be just right for this historic, monumental production'.' For him, it's particularly special to play John Kani's character. 'To now be portraying the character that he portrayed - it's almost overwhelming for me.'
