A Hostile Takeover
In Hostile Takeover, three characters, played by Martin le Maitre, Lindelani Buthelezi, and Mpho Molepo, meet over a freshly dug grave and what ensues is a strange kind of debate about Black Economic Empowerment, the new South African economic policies, religion, morality; “It’s very very contemporary, right on the nub of this weeks ANC stories, and its comic, and strange and perverse and very dark humour”, explains Purkey.
The play, revolves around an encounter between a white foreign affairs man from the old regime who lost his job and now runs strip clubs, and a hitman who was a former MK soldier.
“Mike is just a very good writer” says Purkey, “and that’s quite rare in itself; when you pick up his plays you can read them right through, you can see that they’re formed, you can see that there’s a command of the language”.
Over and above this, Purkey believes that Van Graan has a profound understanding of what’s going on at the level of politics in South Africa, “especially the perverse politics of the current moment”. Purkey also likes Van Graan’s wit, and his strange characters, “I hope that he will grow from strength to strength, I’m encouraging him to write a play built on a more emotional base for the future”, says Purkey.
Purkey has been at the Market Theatre since January, when he officially took over from John Kani. As Artistic Director, Purkey’s primary role is to devise a “diverse, challenging and provocative programme that some how engages with questions of what South African Theatre can be in the 21st Century”.
To that end, Purkey’s developed a mantra, “I say to myself that the meaning of the play lies not so much in the play itself as in the clash between the plays”. He believes that this allows one to think of a series of plays as somehow challenging each other about how we represent the world, South Africa, “our politics, our pain, our desire, and so on”.
While theatre audiences often tend to settle into being a middle class audience or an intelligentsia or a working class audience, the Market Theatre serves all of these constituencies at once. “It’s almost as though there are many Market Theatres all on top of each other” says Purkey.
Diverse plays like House of Shaka, Green Man Flashing, Tshepang and Cards seems to be serving the diverse audience, as these have all played to full houses. “I absolutely believe Hostile Takeover is an example of what we’ve started at the Market Theatre” Purkey explains, “as for the next thing of value, I’ll know it when I see it”.
“I want plays with rich, complex ideas, thoughts and feelings, challenges, theatricality, images, feelings, depth emotion, tragedy, comedy, history, all those words from Hamlet” says Purkey smiling wryly “as opposed to plays where the impulses are far apart and the thoughts turn to dinner”.–RU-NM
Hostile Takeover is on at the Victoria Theatre in Grahamstown until July 5.
