October 11, 2017 to Oct. 22, 2017

Tickets:  $30 and up

Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com

I can’t remember the last time an audience at a Citadel Theatre production sat utterly bewildered for the first 10 minutes and then, by the show’s end, rose as one in an immediate, enthusiastic, standing ovation.

But such was the case October 12, 2017, at the opening night of Ubuntu (The Cape Town Project) on the Maclab Stage.

Ubuntu – meaning “a person is a person through other people” in the South African Bantu language – is full of richly layered complexity, simply and joyfully presented.

Its mystery and magic lies in its deep understanding of the human condition, on so many levels, ALL THE TIME!!! 

In almost every scene, three or four sub-themes, ideas, emotional hues, cultural clashes, pleasing/jarring visual and aural prompts simultaneously enrich our minds.

To try and explain the detail in Ubuntu would be arduous -  as an imperfect overview, think South African black culture, tradition, family ties with deep spiritual overtones colliding with the cold (literally and figuratively), polite, north-rooted Canadian psyche, reserved and aloof.

Think of using words, yes. But, just as much – more – emotion, dance, silence, pantomime, music, dream sequences, visions and other aural impressions. 

In the sociological sphere, Ubuntu is a meditation on cultural conflict, of bridging those cultures (not always successfully) and, in the end game, a celebration of human universality overcoming its differences. 

The first 10 minutes of Ubuntu – deliberately I think – are puzzling.  Nothing is fully explained. Hints are dropped of the story to follow, but it’s disjointed, mixed up, impressionistic … Why is the South African actor sleeping on a bench, what’s so significant about a tattered Polaroid picture a female white actor (in a dream?) has left at his shoulder?

Oh boy, many in the audience were thinking. This is going to be a long 90 minutes of weird abstractness.

But then the plot beautifully drops into place. On top of all the dramatic devices listed above are a darn good mystery and a love story as complex as life itself.

Jabba (Andile Nebulane) is a young South African black man who sets off to find his father Philani (Mbulelo Grootboom) in Canada. Philani had left South Africa to study in Toronto when Jabba was just a year old. Other than a mysterious photo, communication had long been confined simply to the sending of money. Nothing more.

The show is largely serious, but there’s also rich comic relief – the Canadian reaction to being jostled on the aircraft upon disembarking is classic. 

Most striking about Ubuntu – once past the first 10 minutes – is how such richness and complexity plays out so easily and simply. And how South African music and dance integrates into this show’s very bones and propels it to new levels of the theatrical experience. 

The dramatic/theatrical devices surrounding Ubuntu’s plot do not overwhelm but serve only to strengthen the narrative, adding level upon level of meaning that frankly, within our contemporary, resolutely secular Canadian/North American arts culture, is hardly ever introduced, let alone explored.

The story of the development of Ubuntu sheds some light on its powerful and unique multi-level story telling. New Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran, early in his career, ended up in South Africa 13 years ago on a theatrical project that brought together South African and Canadian actors to, hey, create a play! 

There’s an amusing yarn within Colin MacLean’s Foreshadowing column in the Citadel program, how the South African actors, when asked to start a new scene, leapt up and started to dance. The Canadian actors took out their pens and paper and quietly sat, jotting down ideas.

The moulding, synthesis and actual realization of Ubuntu took years, especially given the distances and costs involved of bringing the original actors (three are still in the show) together. “We had all the ideas, the themes, the movement,” said Canadian actor David Jansen in casual conversation after opening night.  “But we needed a narrative, a plot, to pull everything together.  We had seven hours of performance pieces to be boiled down to 90 minutes.” 

The end result, probably because of the years of reflection and digestion before Ubuntu premiered at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 2009, is so seamless that it appears to have come from one playwright with deep knowledge of both cultures.  That a collective effort could produce a play of such singular strength from so many strands is an eye opener.

Kudos to Cloran for pushing ahead with a show that, on the surface, looked as if it was too experimental, too artsy, and, on first glance, perhaps too politically correct to grace a Citadel Theatre main stage.

Many Citadel regulars, being Canadian eh?, might quietly have wondered if Ubuntu was a vanity project on Cloran’s part, given he was the original instigator of the show way back when, was integral to its creation and evolution, brought the show to the Citadel in his first year as artistic director, and then directed it. 

Anything but (vanity)!  Cloran understands that this show transcends any one individual, that, in a mysterious way, is a perfect follow-up to the boisterous and oh-so-English Shakespeare In Love that opened the Citadel’s 2017/18 season.

Anyone with an inquisitive mind and at least a primordial understanding of the power of live performance should take in this show. Ubuntu soars in the mountains. It truly offers insight into why we are on this Earth, why we are cursed/blessed with a yearning for ubuntu. 

Ubuntu runs on the Citadel’s Maclab Stage from Wednesday, October 11, 2017 to Sunday, October 22, 2017. Tickets start at $30.