Tonight – Long, lonely road is less daunting with a friend

“It is in their reaching out that the two women touch their audience.”

The circumstances are familiar. Two women meet when the one attempts to help the other after her room has been ransacked in their block of flats.

They have little but their loneliness in common, but that is enough to form a bond of friendship that will change both their lives.

Rosa is an old inhabitant of London Road. She isn’t ageing well and with both her children out of the country – her daughter is living in Israel and her son has emigrated to Australia – she has no one looking out for her or adding tenderness to her last years.

Stella is much younger and an illegal immigrant from Nigeria who makes a living by selling drugs to well-heeled clients. Hers is a flimsy existence, but one she clings to because she cannot return home to her errant husband. He has already damaged her for life.

These two lonely souls strike up an unlikely friendship as they watch out for one another and keep one another company.

Both the playwright and the director have cleverly used all the stereotypical themes, but avoid playing the expected hand.

Stringing together a handful of snapshot moments, the characters are allowed to breathe and develop their own rhythms which gives an unusual exuberance to the play.

From xenophobia to displacement, ageing and Alzheimer’s, Aids and recreational drugs, the changing neighbourhood that used to be home, from slums to property booms, all are thrown into the mix without lingering and rehashing familiar arguments yet painting a very particular South African story.

It is the two women and the way they view the world and dance through their days that becomes the heart and soul of the play. That and the extraordinary performances, especially of Scott who has the more showy part.

Scott has assembled a lost soul that gladly reaches to anyone out there with such aplomb, one immediately takes her to heart. Her speech patterns and quirky movements become part of Rosa’s being as she toddles around her life and that of Stella’s in a most endearing fashion. She has no one who can say goodbye or even know that they have to.

“They think I’m going to be old forever,” she says heartbreakingly of her children.

Stella is there to listen and as such, Makhutshi has a much harder route to travel to find a way to climb under the skin of her character, but she does with an exterior harshness that turns mushy when her friend is in trouble.

It is in their reaching out that the two women touch their audience.

It is an intensely sad story, yet told with great tenderness and joy as the women find solace in reaching out and discovering the friendship of the other.

- Diane de Beer

http://www.iol.co.za/tonight/long-lonely-road-is-less-daunting-with-a-friend-1.1034053

Business Day

“What unfolds is a warm, witty and wise drama, told in snapshots, that is sentimental without being schmaltzy, stirring without being manipulative”

IN THIS age of special effects, beautiful but dumb big-budget blockbusters and a belief that it’s okay for audiences’ brains to be comfortably numbed as long as their senses are seduced, many are hankering for a return to the basics of good storytelling.

For the past three years, the “best movie” Oscars have gone to low- budget films — Slumdog Millionaire, The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech — and reports suggest that the heyday of the 3D box-office bonanza is over, with moviegoers reluctant to pay top dollar to experience smoke and mirrors but zero plot.

Similarly, when it comes to lavish theatre musicals, bigger doesn’t always mean better. The much-hyped and much-fraught Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark, by Julie Taymor and with music by U2’s Bono and The Edge, has started previewing to brutal reviews.

Reportedly the most expensive musical in Broadway history, with a 65m budget, it has been lashed as being a “shrill, insipid mess”, “shockingly clumsy” and “clinically bipolar”.

Peter Parker says that “with great power comes great responsibility”, and the same could be said of swollen budgets: creative integrity can come under pressure when financiers want to see a return on their investment.

That’s why when a tiny human story with a gigantic heart comes along — a tale simply and gently told, that is affecting but unaffected, that tugs at the emotional core — we stand up and applaud.

Such a treasure is Cape Town playwright Nicholas Spagnoletti’s LONDON ROAD, directed by Lara Bye, which has premiered in Johannesburg’s Old Mutual Theatre on the Square after sending sales of Kleenex rocketing wherever it has been performed.

Having missed its sold-out run at the National Arts Festival last year, which won a Golden Ovation Award, I went to see this two-hander with high expectations. But the play opened with a disconcerting jolt. Robyn Scott, who plays elderly Jewish widow Rosa, is talking to young Nigerian Stella (Ntombi Makhutshi), a fellow tenant in a block of flats in Sea Point — yet Scott’s character at first sight appears to be a grotesque caricature to the point of being painful.

With her tremulous, high-pitched, bleating whine, she’s a cross between Megan Mullally’s character Karen in the sitcom Will and Grace and Brenda Blethyn’s character in the movie Secrets and Lies. But this initial dismay quickly wears off as Scott skilfully makes the audience warm to her astonishing character over the next 65 minutes — a process that is critical for the ending to have any effect.

After initially alienating us — much as she must have done to the immediately suspicious and guarded Rosa — Stella soon captivates with her bluntness, bawdy humour and immense empathy for the plight of others. As they gradually scratch away at the surface to reveal the humanity in each other, the characters move beyond the clichés and stereotypes of their first impressions, and so does the audience.

Rosa’s children and grandchildren have emigrated to Australia and Israel, her husband Isaac (not the brightest or most passionate of men, she says blithely, but a nice man nonetheless) is dead and she is stuck in a flat in Sea Point’s London Road which, having gone through a seedy patch, is now becoming trendy again. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with Stella, apparently her polar opposite — a young, Nigerian drug dealer who consorts with gangsters.

But the two women are both lonely, abandoned by their loved ones and in need of solace, and they forge a strong connection.

“It’s easier to talk to a complete stranger than to my own bloody daughter,” observes Rosa.

What unfolds is a warm, witty and wise drama, told in snapshots, that is sentimental without being schmaltzy, stirring without being manipulative. It will strike a chord in everyone who has ever felt isolated or friendless, and the irrepressible Rosa is one of the most original and quirky — yet 100% authentic — characters you’re likely to see on stage for a long time.

Thanks to Bye’s direction and wonderful, well-researched characters that have elicited Fleur du Cap- nominated performances , Spagnoletti — who is also up for Fleur du Cap for best new South African script — has struck gold with London Road. Simply put, it’s a play about how small gestures can amount to great things. See it until March 19, and prepare to be moved.

-Christina Kennedy

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=135871

Theatre on the Square, Johannesburg, Feb-Mar 2011

Old Mutual Theatre on the Square in Sandton, Johannesburg from February 23rd until March 19th 2011.

Bookings are through the theatre’s box office on 011-883-8606 or through their booking agent – Strictly Tickets on 073-725 7381.

London Road is at the Old Mutual Theatre on the Square in Sandton, Johannesburg until March 19th 2011.

Shows run nightly Tuesdays to Fridays at 20h15 and there are 2 shows on Saturdays – at 18h00 and 20h30.

Bookings are through the theatre’s box office on 011-883-8606 or online at www.strictlytickets.com or www.theatreonthesquare.co.za

Playscript Published by Junkets

The playscript of London Road has been published by Junkets Publishers ISBN : 978-0-620-45827-6 Contact info.junkets@iafrica.com for orders.

The playscript of London Road has been published by Junkets Publishers

ISBN : 978-0-620-45827-6

Contact info.junkets@iafrica.com for orders.

Robyn Sassen – Cue

This six-tissue production teases apart contemporary South African stereotype with astuteness and focus.

Small story has huge heart

This six-tissue production teases apart contemporary South African stereotype with astuteness and focus.

In Jewish culture, there is an idiomatic expression called “bittere gelechte”. It translates literally into “sad joke”, and has been the impetus for generations of Yiddish humour.

While not a conventional type of joke, it is a means of talking about hardship that throws up dark laughter in the place of maudlin. This kind of idiom informs the kernel of London Road and is one of the reasons why your laughter in this piece will be generously sprinkled with tears, possibly to the point of your not being able to smile at its closure.

One of the first nominees of the Standard Bank Ovation Award, London Road is directed by Lara Bye and written by Nicholas Spagnoletti. It teases apart several contemporary South African stereotypes with astuteness and focus that will hit you hard in the solar plexus and make you think differently about both old Jewish yentas and drug-dealing, Aids riddled Nigerians and, by default, of the whole complicated mess that is our post-democratic society.

On paper, these cultural stereotypes might sound poles apart. Using them as such, the play is a prism to infrequently explored areas: the collapse of dignity in urban flatlands in the face of shifting currents or demographics; and the generation of white South Africans who’ve left for “greener” pastures. Leaving elderly parents to forage for themselves, ultimatly to die alone.

Rosa Kaplowitz, played by Robyn Scott, is a 70-something widow. Formerly as resident of the Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow, after losing her husband  Isaac and the emigration of her son & daughter, she has relocated to Sea Point.

Stella, played by Ntombi Makhutshi, is her opposite. She’s a young woman, an illegal immigrant, from Nigeria. Living in the city’s underbelly and supplying unlikely but monied clients with cocaine, ecstasy and other chemical vitals, she lives in shadows and in fear.

Stella and Rosa are tenants in the same block of flats. On London Road. The story teeters on predictability as this unlikely friendship unwinds and develops. However, it is utterly sterling performances of the cast and the brilliance with which it is put together that makes this play one of the Festival’s must-sees.

Scott interprets Rosa with a warmth and empathy that is difficult to believe. The character is more than 40 yers her senior; she embodies the endearing vunerable idiosyncrasies of an ageing woman in indifferent health, in a performance which, if you have a beloved older woman in your life, or have lost one, will simply melt you.

Makhutshi is well cast physically and offers a three-dimensional reflection of her character, but her accent is not held consistantly; she gives Stella flesh and blood through the words in the script rather than embodying her from the inside out, as Scott does Rosa.

London Road is a six-tissue production, but it does not manipulate you or slip into cliché. It enfolds glorious subtleties which are about melding cultures, including Nigerian-evocative marimba and the klezmer-evocative clarinet, in the interstices of the play that colour its transitions.

Its a small story with a huger heart and is one of those Festival moments that won’t leave your head when you leave this city.

-Robyn Sassen, Cue guest editor



The Herald – “Bye’s look at life a top attraction at Fest”

“… hard-hitting theatre circling the core of our human condition like the seagulls on Rosa’s beloved promenade… Bye is a master in the theatre of suggestion…You will laugh –- and you will cry as the uniting universal themes are shown. Truly beautiful.”

IT has been said of director Lara Bye that everything she touches, turns to gold. And her latest acclaimed production at the National Arts Festival is no exception.

Everybody is flocking to London Road which has found its way into the Top 20 grossing productions at the Festival so far, something that in previous years has been mainly the turf of stand-up comedies.

Stripped to its bare bones, the play written by Nicholas Spagnoletti, is an intimate glimpse on growing old, loneliness and the healing power of friendship that unfolds between two women from vastly different backgrounds living in the same block of flats in London Road, Seapoint.

Stella is a Nigerian woman living in a converted storage room while Rosa, an elderly Jewish widow, lives in a flat on the fifth floor from where she partakes in the “simple and ancient joy of people watching” through her binoculars.

Their relationship is based on honesty. They simply do not have the time to hide anything from each other.

And this makes for hard-hitting theatre circling the core of our human condition like the seagulls on Rosa’s beloved promenade.

The health of Rosa, whose children are living in Israel and Australia, is rapidly deteriorating and her short-term memory is starting to fail.

All her friends are either “dead or dilly” and she confesses that after her husband’s death, the “evenings were eternal”.

Stella and Rosa are performed by two of Cape Town’s leading actresses – Robyn Scott and Ntombi Makhutshi. And they do not disappoint in the least. The 37-year-old Scott, who has recently earned a Fleur Du Cap nomination for best actress for her role in Elizabeth –- Almost by Chance a Woman, goes through a masterful transformation to become the elderly Rosa. And we are not just talking about the skillfully applied make-up and the curly orange-red wig of a Jewish Seapoint “tannie” .

She lovingly creates a Rosa – from her shuffled steps to the faraway fear in her eyes when she tells Stella that she is “petrified” of death. Makhutshi who has been in action on stage in Iago’s Last Dance and Die Storie Van Die Vertaalde Mense, delivers an equally powerful performance as one of Seapoint’s community of immigrants.

Interestingly enough, the play also touches upon the urban and moral decay of places like Seapoint: the arrival of Nigerians and Congolese, and elderly people like Rosa who have no choice but to stay behind.

Bye is a master in the theatre of suggestion.This is reflected in the seemingly simple set. The table and chairs which are the only props against a clever black backdrop, are not just any old table and chairs. According to her, she and renowned theatre designer, puppeteer and performing artist Craig Leo, searched high and low before they finally found the “perfect” table at Milnerton market. She gently distills London Road until only the essence is left. You will laugh –- and you will cry as the uniting universal themes are shown. Truly beautiful.

http://www.theherald.co.za/entertainment/article.aspx?id=580186

Caroline Smart – Artsmart

“Excellent script, great direction and stunning performances.”

LONDON ROAD

(Pic by Christine Gouws: Nthombi Makhutshi as Stella and Robyn Scott as Rosa)

Excellent script, great direction and stunning performances. (Review by Caroline Smart)

London Road is currently one of the hot contenders for a Standard Bank Ovation Award and rightly so. It’s certainly creating a buzz here at Festival. Sometimes pre-hype – everyone telling you it’s the most fantastic thing they have seen – can put a show at a disadvantage because you go expecting the impossible.

Not so with London Road which offers an incredible performance from 37 year-old Robyn Scott as the outspoken and insatiably-curious 78 year-old Jewish granny Rosa whose life is quietly but inexorably drawing to a close. Putting in an equally impressive performance, and supporting Robyn to the hilt, is Nthombi Makhutshi as the drug-dealing Nigerian who becomes Rosa’s closest friend and confidante.

Speaking from experience, I know the rigid control one has to exercise when playing a character far older than oneself. And in Robyn Scott’s case, she has Rosa’s breathing disorder to contend with – and this she handles flawlessly.

From the moment we meet the wheezing Rosa as she wanders into Stella’s flat to find out about a burst pipe, she holds the audience’s attention with every gesture, ironic snort, gutsy laugh or vague reminiscence. Sometimes the thought processes take a little time as she gazes into space waiting for the memory to click in. Then there’s the delightful “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no” – just in case you didn’t catch it the first time!

Rosa is an example of so many elderly people living on their own or in old-age homes in South Africa with their children having emigrated and very few friends still left alive. But Rosa’s a fighter – she grabs life with both hands. Still appreciating a beautiful body, she invites Stella to use her binoculars to peer at the young man in the flats opposite. And there’s nothing a good tipple won’t cure!

It’s definitely Rosa’s play but Nthombi Makhutshi is a perfect foil as the feisty Stella who is big-hearted and begins to care for her new friend with compassion and affection. The conversations they have are filled with fun and laughter and the occasional argument is soon dissolved – usually through some caustic comment from Rosa.

National Arts Festival Director Ismail Mahomed sums it all up perfectly: “A beautifully written script performed magnificently by two very talented women and directed with such beautiful eloquence. This play raises the bar on new South African writing for theatre.”

Raising the bar on writing, it certainly does. Working from Cape Town playwright Nicholas Spagnoletti’s initial script, director Lara Bye further developed the work for the stage through improvisations in rehearsals. One comes out of the show moved to tears in many cases, but also with a sense of deep fulfilment that you’ve seen a special piece of theatre. – Caroline Smart

http://news.artsmart.co.za/2010/06/london-road.html

Ovation award at Fest

London Road has received a Standard Bank Ovation award in the first few days of the 2010 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. The show is receiving standing ovations on a daily basis and started selling out on Friday 25th June. It runs until July 4th.

Part of London Road’s marketing campaign for the festival are these London Road ‘roadsigns’ on display at various street corners and venues.

Villa Pascal

The acclaimed new South African play, LONDON ROAD, comes to Durbanville for 2 nights only before it makes tracks for Grahamstown.

Last chance to see new smash hit before Grahamstown

Acclaimed London Road for two nights only at Villa Pascal

The acclaimed new South African play, London Road, will be performed for two more nights only before it makes tracks for Grahamstown.

Lara Bye’s production of this tender, funny story about a friendship between two women from diverse backgrounds, will be performed at Villa Pascal on Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 June.

Written by rising Cape Town playwright, Nicholas Spagnoletti, and further developed for the stage in collaboration with director Bye and actresses Robyn Scott and Ntombi Makhutshi, the much-lauded London Road has been taking the Cape Town theatre scene by storm. The production premiered at the Kalk Bay Theatre and was consequently invited to The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town.

The performances by Robyn Scott as the elderly Jewish widow, Rosa, and Ntombi Makhutshi as the young Nigerian, Stella, have been described as ‘phenomenal’, ‘breathtaking’ and ‘a tour de force’.       The rave reviews have included: “…feels like a little miracle.” (The Next 48 Hours);     “….simply brilliant… radiates beauty and empathy.” (Sunday Independent) ;    “Die 36-jarige Scott in die rol van die bejaarde Rosa Kaplowitz is verbysterend… Makhutshi is pragtig en het ‘n sterk teenwoordigheid op die verhoog.” (Die Burger) and   “The humour is gentle, the drama and pathos understated … brought to life by two formidable stage talents …” (Sunday Times).

“Having presented London Road on the Cape Peninsula and in Cape Town, we are excited to be bringing it closer to audiences in the Northern Suburbs,” says producer Simon Cooper.

On the surface, Stella and Rosa Kaplowitz have nothing in common other than the block of flats in which they live in London Road, Seapoint. Stella is a young Nigerian woman living in a damp, converted storage room. Long distant family, dodgy gangsters and a sense of survival makes her very mistrusting of the gestures of strangers. Rosa is an elderly Jewish widow living in a flat on the fifth floor. Her children and grandchildren live overseas so she keeps herself occupied by becoming very involved in the business of her neighbourhood.

After an act of violence, these two women find themselves stranded together and take comfort in the common themes they realise unite them: absent men, scattered families, broken relationships and a dark sense of humour.

The original script by Nicholas Spagnoletti won the Audience Choice award at the PANSA new South African Playwriting competition in 2007. The award-winning technical team that has helped bring the production to life include Craig Leo designing set props and costume with Lara Bye; Faheem Bardien creating the lighting design, and original sound from Braam Du Toit.

London Road will be performed at Villa Pascal on Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 June at 19h00. Doors open at 18h00 and patrons are invited to bring their own drinks and a picnic basket.

Tickets cost R110, with a discount of 10% for groups of 10 or more. Students with valid student cards can buy tickets at the door 30 minutes prior to the start of the performance, subject to availability, for R75.

To book contact 021-975 2566 or visit http://www.villapascal.co.za

PG 13 Language

*Join London Road on Facebook: “London Road” or visit www.londonroad.co.za

Production information:

Production: London Road, presented by KBT Productions

Written by: Nicholas Spagnoletti and developed for the stage with the director and cast

Directed by: Lara Bye

Venue: Villa Pascal

Dates: Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 June

Cast: Robyn Scott and Ntomboxolo Makhutshi

Set, props and costume design by Craig Leo and Lara Bye

Lighting Design by Faheem Bardien

Original Sound by Braam Du Toit

Original Set Concept: Lara Bye

Working at The Fugard

Working at The Fugard

Our stage manager cum graphic designer cum technical wizard cum general handyman Jon Keevy writes about his experience working on London Road at the beautiful new Fugard Theatre.

From the outside the Fugard looks like a church that the city has grown up around. The other buildings are tightly packed around it and loom a little over it, giving its stone façade an out of place feeling that captures the magic of the whole place. It feels like a old and trusted place, rather than the new kid on the block in the little theatre world of Cape Town.

Read the rest of Jon’s post here

Remember London Road runs at the The Fugard until next Saturday the 8th of May 2010.

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