As uncomfortable as a hot prickly rash spreading over one’s body, and as impossible to escape, African Gothic serves as an analogy for the rank, corrupt and insidiously damaging Apartheid regime during which the play is set. On one of the hottest nights of the year it was not difficult to transport oneself from the Arcola to a derelict, remote, drought-stricken farm setting. The sound of cicadas filling the studio helped to set the scene. Although Barebones Theatre Company say their name is suggestive of a ‘poor theatre’ experience, and minimal
set, props and lighting, their staging pretty much filled the Arcola Studio Two with ramshackle living interior, an iron-framed, worn bed taking up much of the space.

Writer and actress Reza de Wet is a huge figure in South African theatre. She first wrote African Gothic in Afrikaans as Diepe Grond, from the expression "Still waters, deep ground and underneath the devil is turning around” and first performed in the Market Theatre Johannesburg in 1985. Whilst critically acclaimed, it was also fiercely condemned by Afrikaans conservatives as a subversive portrayal of repression.

The arid environment of the South African desert out of which nothing productive can grow is the world in which an orphaned brother and sister have grown up without parental supervision. Sussie (Jane Gwilliams) and Frikke (Gary Wright), play out the punishment rituals and memories of their childhoods whilst bound in an incestuous tryst. Their servant Alina (played by director Naomi Wirthner) seems equally locked in keeping their dark closed world from outsiders. The performers are intently involved in delivering the disturbed and suffocating scenario. Barebones say the production is focused on working with the ‘dangerous energy of this play’.

The challenge of the piece is to control the extremities of the material, the overwrought emotions of Sussie which at times become unbearable. The abhorrence and fear from the lawyer played by Gil Sutherland, who visits the farm on business and falls victim to the gothic world of this feral brother and sister, is also a challenge to manage although Sutherland does deliver the humour of his character well. With incest, murder, trauma and regression, the potential for what is described as a black comedy to become farce, requires restraint. The piece worked well at times, particularly at the opening of the second act where the drama picked up in a slightly cooled off studio and a flowing pace seemed established. The bond of loyalty and dependency between brother and sister is well conveyed and a dark humour was in evidence but there was also a sense of laughter as a release for the intensity and highly charged delivery of the action. The performers manage this challenging piece well, but as it is not a play that is likeable in essence; aiming to cause discomfort, it falls into the category of challenging drama. Certainly one can say that African Gothic shows the ultimate poison of a dysfunctional and damaged situation as was the case for South Africa under apartheid.

Bryony Hegarty

African Gothic by Reza de Wet runs until 13 August in Arcola Studio 2

Arcola Theatre, Ashwin Street, E8 (020-7503 1646)

2- 13 August

Studio 2 - 8pm

Matinee performances 6 and 13th August at 3pm

Tickets £15 (£11 concessions)

Pay What You Can Tuesdays

Bookings http://www.arcolatheatre.com/

For more information click here www.barebonesproject.com