WHITE MAN'S GUIDE TO SACRIFICE. Written and directed by Alex McCarthy, with Nathan Lynn, Cameron Robertson, Sive Gubanxa and Jazzara Jaslyn. At Baxter Theatre until Saturday. TRACEY SAUNDERS reviews
IMAGINE you have reached a critical moment in your career, everything is going well, nay excellently. You have the bespoke suit, the apartment with the right address and most importantly an invitation to join the most exclusive of all exclusive clubs: the Lamborghini Club.
This is the life of Fork and Scholtz, two young white men, the embodiment of power and privilege and proud of it. They have officially arrived and are on the cusp of enjoying the life glorified on Instagram and epitomized on the cover of glossy magazines that cost the equivalent of a week’s groceries.
They are faced with one small problem of the bovine kind – there's a cow in their apartment, a living, breathing, defecating cow.
In White Man's Guide to Sacrifice McCarthy sketches a totally absurd, yet strangely believable scenario which scratches at our suburban sensibility. On the surface the story seems too obvious, even puerile, but look deeper and the cutting barbs, the revelations of truth point to something far more serious. The social and racial divisions in South Africa are encapsulated in Scholtz and Fork’s division between “bus and taxi people and Lamborghini people.”
They are clearly Lamborghini people, but their potential inclusion in the rarefied club is at risk. The impact of a cow in your residence on your social standing can not be underestimated. Fortunately help is at hand and from an unlikely source. Enter Khathu Rachisusu (Sive Gubanxa), a “multi-talented multi-faceted” consultant with the titles of hacker, private investigator, event photographer and a poet. She also drives a taxi and can repair a bus.
Both the embodiment and the antithesis of a “bus and taxi person”. Her chances of ever being accepted by the club are slim, actually non-existent. In this delicate situation however it is her credentials as an ‘Ancestral Omen Distribution Agent’ which are most important. With a presentation delivered on her flip chart she offers the men a solution, a win-win solution. This is a redistribution plan with a purpose and beneficiaries which will solve their problem and assuage their guilt. Needless to say her suggestions are not embraced warmly.
They have no interest in redistribution and are oblivious of privilege and sans guilt. Gubanxa is the highlight of the show. She lights up the stage and beneath the fast lines and snappy repartee lie many a hard truth. She plays her character with a tragicomic sensibility that will have you laughing through tears. The reality encapsulated in her response to Fork’s question about her dense CV will be familiar to many young and successful black people. For the men “getting into the club is everything” and there is no limit to what they are prepared to do to be accepted in to its hallowed ranks. Their “reality which revolves around cars and the next big promotion” is their highest goal.
Khathu bursts their bubble and points out they “are part of a tiny population that have the luxury of living in a fantasy.” When she poses the inevitable question about the constituency of the Lamborghini club the response “How did you get on to race?” elicits one of her many truthfully funny monologues. “Do you live in South Africa? Am I black? Are you white?”
Race is the central theme of the piece and although some of the dialogue feels almost evangelical in its strident delivery it is pertinent to much of the current critical debate.
Nathan Lynn as Fork, the more likeable, albeit marginally, of this pair once again displays his understated and perfectly timed comic ability. His dream sequence in which he communes with his ancestors is performed with a cinematic quality which is enhanced by the soundtrack and lighting effects.
The appearance of the cow seems surreal, as it probably should be, but doesn’t produce the same sense of shock in local audiences as it may in other countries.
The notion of livestock residing in a residential apartment is not the most unusual thing you will see in South Africa. The juxtaposition of cultural values adds another layer to the piece and the writer avoids commenting on the relative merits of the different value systems presented and rather allows the character’s behaviour to speak.
Robertson’s final impassioned, somewhat psychotic monologue is a small masterpiece and advances all the arguments which strengthen the French economist Thomas Piketty’s warnings against inequality.
McCarthy graduated from UCT’s Drama Department in 2014 and was awarded The Mavis Taylor Award for theatre-making. UHM, which he wrote with Callum Tilbury, won the Best Writing Award at the National Arts Festival Student Festival in the same year. His writing is sharp and witty and carries a deep thread of sardonic irony and cynical social critique.
He challenges our notions of success and the way in which society measures it and he will make you feel uncomfortable. The closing sequence veers towards sentimentality, but its redeeming nature does allow for a glimmer of hope.
The piece was originally staged at the Arena theatre on the UCT Hiddingh Campus and McCarthy has managed the transition to a thrust stage well. The scatological content is not for the squeamish, but is handled with some very innovative staging devices.
Pieter Dirk Uys has suggested that the best defence against fear is laughter. I would argue that it is also an excellent device to confront prejudice. McCarthy and his cast have delivered a piece which allows us to laugh at ourselves and appreciate the absurdity of maintaining the status quo. More than that though it reveals the hypocrisy of capital and the challenges of redistribution in a country where inequality is rife.
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