Servants' Ball and Blitzkrieg

May 11-15, Moser Theatre, Wadham College, Oxford

‘Neocolonialism is intoxicating!’ declares Thomas (Priyanka Mantha) to the disgust of Bonzo, Mupangani and friends, as he sets down a crate of free beer bestowed on him by his boss, the “real comrade” Norman Drake. The advantages, and the shame, of Thomas’s position, are deftly exposed in Marechera’s drama, which ultimately gives way to nihilist hysterics, and the suggestion of real, possible change. Mantha’s character, derided as a suck-up, himself abuses the servant of a black family as a sell-out (“they are the ones who will really oppress you”). Yet Thomas ends up using Drake’s white puppet-head as a prop for a cruel pastiche of him and all like him who bribe and fuck under a veneer of socialist honour and high culture.

Linda Laatikainen prevails in the sexual economy of the ‘comrade’ neocolonials as Mrs Lydia Nzuzu, a predatorial woman whom independence has made to look ridiculous. Married to the Minister bribed by Drake for the presidency of the congress of commerce” (as Thomas parodies it later on when he finally cracks), she winds Drake around her little finger with the ease of a boa constrictor: “Norman you are simply delicious, the bedrooms are this way I think.” Laatikainen doubles up as Sarah, the mad and largely silent female presence in the Servants’ Ball, whose body appears to be open game for the frustrated inmates of the shebeen.

Jay Bernard, a poet, runs the shop there as Granny Beri. But on the other side of the space she is ‘Shogun’, Marechera’s demotic ‘Asian stereotype’, Drake’s lewd bodyguard-cum-spy. Initially obedient (‘Sir, they cannot get enough of your esteemed Caucausian manhood’) Shogun ends the play with a rebellious cackle: ‘Toilet make joke on whole country!’ In the face of this, even Chris Turner, of Imps fame, is left speechless. Turner mans the unholy stuffed carcass of Drake and all he represents, while Harry Fox, Claire Little and Kit Dorey slimily ooze around him and the toilet. Little and Dorey, as Majazi and Old Man Bonzo in the world of the servants’, gracefully lead choreographies expressive of confusion, distrust in, and longing for the future, to Osborn’s rendering of Marechera’s poems: “what have I done my love? Our forest is on fire... today’s gossip is tomorrow’s mountains”.

Meanwhile actual interactions between the two worlds are mediated via Alfie, the Dambudzo Marechera silhouette, psychotic dilettante able to hob nob to some extent with the sneering ministers of Blitzkrieg and the raucous workers of The Servants’ Ball. Alfie, played by Sophie Lewis, speaks a double tongue, a mimicry reflecting the psychic split engendered by his English education and subsequent return to a country where, as he says in mock-thug, “the horns is out and de comrade is in, but de act is still de same.” Lewis breaks down in an attempt to Latinize ‘good Shona beer-drinking songs’, having left the boss’s party and collapsed drunk in the shebeen. Her ‘Alfie’ finally revives to orchestrate the ritual marriage of ‘Raven’ and ‘Dick’, son and daughter of the so-called reconciliation regime, played by Joseph Minden and Lucy Fyffe. All stand and toast the future of Zimbabwe.

The two plays, The Servants’ Ball and Blitzkrieg (aka ‘The Toilet) seemed to fit together perfectly, and after a quick script splicing job, the full-scale, multifarious whole began to emerge. Lewis and Waksman both have a history of ensemble directing (including Spring Quartet, The Lucky Ones, and Small Stylish Silver Deco at Oxford), and a shared impatience with student productions that stay square, predictable, and safe. Their project has been daringly experimental, and collaborative in the extreme, bringing together the independent conceptions of Laurence Osborn – who put together an orchestra – Anna Svensson – who created Comrade Drake and his guests’ bib-like costumes out of scraps – and Sarah Skenazy – mistress of the loo, whose catchword was bottles, bottles, bottles. “I dreamt of the devil”, sing vocalists Grace Newcombe and Ben Wingfield (backed by Julian Bacharach and Joe Phillips): “he had put whitewash on the door / the rain has refused to fall. Come, come, come to the meeting.” It works, it thrills, so come along.

7.30pm MONDAY thru FRIDAY, May 11th-15th, Moser theatre, Wadham college.

book tickets by emailing: sbbkdirectors@gmail.com [£5 student, £7 non student]