Theatre rivets its audience
ALEXANDRA – Theatre play thrills its audience.
Olive Tree Theatre dished out yet another of its epic productions to an appreciative weekend crowd keen to savour the seemingly unending creativity of its founding director, Ntsieng Mokgoro.
The riveting piece, Distant Faces, took Mogkoro two years to put together. It is performed impeccably by talented and multi-award-winning actor, Mduduzi Mabaso, actresses Harriet Manamela and young Pretty Ncayiyane of many popular soapies, dramas and films, including Generations, Rhythm City, Skeem Saam, Yizo Yizo, Scandal, Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamonds.
Mokgoro said the production is a heartbreaking tale of a lad who sacrificed his wife and an unborn child to go into exile to fight for his country’s freedom only to come back 18 years later to a country that has forgotten him and many others. His reunion with the wife and daughter becomes a perfect example of a dysfunctional family from the effects of war. The theme reflects the reality and dynamics of most freedom fighters and families who are left behind to carry on in the hope of a beautiful ending.
“Like in any war situation, his family is a casualty of this reality as portrayed by the intertwined struggle of the woman, man and a child all trapped in post-war effects. It’s a vivid perceptive and a gripping piece to keep one clenched to one’s seat, as they struggle to find their way back to each other.”
She added, in the end, it reflects a life of unfulfilled promises, shattered dreams and sacrifices of a wife whose heart is abandoned by love as she is forced to survive without her husband. And, of a child’s frustration without a supportive family system, which forced her to endure and raise herself while frozen in a battle between her parents.
She is robbed of a normal childhood and is stuck with parents in denial of the mess within them. Like her father, she is on a quest to find emancipation and carve out a new path for herself while the mother has learnt many ways to continue a life of hardship.
Details: Olive Tree Theatre 011 048 6152.
Also read: Olive Tree Theatre in Alexandra pushes the boundaries of age
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